Going, going ... GONE!

I really tried to finish Mary's quilt before today but I just couldn't get it done.  I did get enough stitch in the ditch finished to stabilize it and basted horizontally every four inches or so just to be safe.  While it was on Arabella (her last quilt for me) I noticed that the colors are very similar to those in my Turtle quilt, hanging behind the machine.

This morning we got up early, cleaned the machine, cleaned out underneath the machine and cleared a path out to the driveway.  Here she is before we started cleaning up:

Here she is all ready to go,  I found about a million pins and many dust bunnies underneath her!

Luckily, her new owner Melisa, is very nice and very excited to have her own Gammill longarm machine.  Melisa, her husband Larry and daughter Lauren showed up about 11:00 this morning with a 16 foot trailer, all ready to take Arabella to her new home in Oklahoma.  Peter gave some tips on maintenance,

And then it was time to start taking her apart.  We removed the rollers and wrapped them in old batting scraps to protect them and the canvas leaders.

She is on casters, so she rolled right out the door onto the little deck and then...

Oops, Houston, we have a problem.  The opening in the deck railing was too narrow to let her through.

Larry is a handy kind of a guy, so he removed the deck railing and onto the trailer she went.

She's well packed up and ready to go and Larry even put our railing back for us!

Bye Arabella!

She's GONE!

  

Can't wait for my new machine.

The Thimbleberries Lady strikes again!

Marsha the Thimbleberries Lady brought me this cute throw to quilt.  One of the most recent quilts I did for her that wasn't a Thimbleberries pattern (gasp) was a finalist in the Schnibbles contest.  You can see all the finalists here, including Marsha's. Her quilt is the third from the left in the third row.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/martingaleandcompany/sets/72157624963296232/

I haven't mentioned to Arabella (my Gammill Classic Plus longarm machine), that she is for sale -  I'm afraid it might affect her performance.  I've decided to sell her and buy a new machine made by Innova.  It is hard to give her up since she is the one that taught me to quilt with a longarm but I'm very excited about my new machine! I'm advertising in several places and chomping at the bit to get her sold.

Yikes!

It's been a while - not because I have been especially busy but because life has been kind of uneventful.  I did go on a Garden Railroad Tour last weekend where I saw this in Nancy's backyard.  Nancy is a friend from Prairie Quilt Guild and her railroad was our favorite of all that we toured.  She made her husband put a quilt block on the barn - it was really cute.

I did a program for the MO-KAN Machine Quilters Guild in Overland Park yesterday, so I had piles of quilts out as I was getting ready to go.  Elsie thought it was cat heaven, she would like us to leave a large pile of quilts on the dining room table all the time since it makes the perfect cat perch!

We had to call a plumber to fix a few leaky faucets and to find out why one of the pipes in a downstairs closet was leaking.  Ahh, the joys of owning an old house!  The old cast iron pipes had rusted, so the plumber had to cut a four foot section out and replace it with PVC pipe.  Here it sits waiting for the junk man to pick up.

Next month I will begin serving as President of my quilt guild.  Fortunately I will have a wonderful and very experienced Board which will make my job much easier.  Traditionally, the President makes nametags for the Board so I just finished seventeen nametags that I will hand out at the first Board meeting.  I still need to make more for Committee chairs, but that can wait a few weeks.

Wednesday we had severe thunderstorms all over south central Kansas and for a while a real nasty one was headed our way.  They were warning of golf ball sized hail and sixty MPH winds.  It ended up missing us but south Wichita saw these... YIKES!  This picture is from the Wichita Eagle website.

Give the Central Kansas Shop Hop quilt a hand!

All of the quilt shops involved in the Central Kansas Shop Hop (this year it is October 1-3) make a quilt using the theme fabric.  Charlotte of Charlotte's Sew Natural in Newton asked me to quilt hers and that is the quilt in the picture above.  The theme fabric is the lighter background fabric in the quilt.  It was designed especially for the shop hop and has the names of the local towns involved printed on it.

I tried not to do too much quilting in the center four patch of each block so the neat kaleidoscope effect would show through. 

When we dropped the quilt off at the shop, Mary gave me a Cotton Picker, which she says is wonderful for removing little threads from your quilt.  Peter is the Head Thread Picker at our house, so he gets to model it:

He decided to make a little stand for it.  He scanned his hand, then glued the picture to some foam board and cut it out.  It's goofy looking - I like it!

Here it is all dressed up.

You asked for it

Anyone else old enough to remember that old television show?  I thought I would show how I did the border on the quilt in the previous post because Vivian - You asked for it!

I rarely use commercial stencils because I like drawing my own designs.  That is what I did in the border of Mary's quilt.  I used the length of the block as my guide for the size of the design; that way I can mark the border while the quilt is on the machine, as I go.  I measured the length and width of the area and then doodled around until I had a design I liked.

Since this design was fairly complicated I used template plastic and then cut it out with scissors.  It probably took less than an hour to end up with this- which is half of the total design.  I just flip it over and trace out the other half.  I actually try not to mark quilts for customers because it is time consuming, but sometimes it just seems like that's what the quilt needs!  Besides, if I have the time, I think it's fun.

Sometimes if the design isn't too complex, I will draw it on freezer paper; I make a double thickness by ironing two pieces together. (shiny sides together - I learned to do that in a workshop with Kim Diehl) This works well but doesn't hold up as well as the template plastic so I only use it on simpler designs.  This one I tried first with freezer paper and then decided to use template plastic.

I have also used manila folders.

It really helps to use a good marking tool - I love this Bohin marker that I bought at MQS this spring.  It has a small point which makes it possible to mark very accurately.  So far it has come out easily with a slightly damp microfiber cloth.

I keep the templates I make and reuse them on other quilts.  Hope that answered your question and wasn't TMI!

Hop to It and tomatoes

Mary's quilt is from the book by Edyta Sitar, Hop to It.  It's really cute and Mary did a wonderful job on it, as usual.  She has entered it in the Kansas State Fair - last year she won the big over-all Grand Champion award for her Dear Jane quilt (which was hand quilted).  I think she is an over-achiever!

I can't seem to quilt anything without a few feathers.

I tried something different in the border.

It cooled down finally and my tomatoes are making a comeback.  After producing about 8 tomatoes, they refused to do anything once it got over 100 degrees for so long. (Hey - I felt the same way!)  The bush is huge and healthy and now that it has cooled down, it is covered with blossoms (and grasshoppers, we'll see who wins)  I'm hoping for some fall tomatoes!

Here is the bush last June.

Here it is now - about 7 feet tall.

Back from Colorado

I finished this quilt for Sylvia just before we left town for a quick visit to Colorado.  Sylvia had a list of words that she wanted me to quilt into the overall design and she also wanted some sunflowers.  She put a lot of work into this photo quilt for her son! She used gradated hand-dyed fabric that she bought at the AQS show in Paducah.

We drove home yesterday from a quick visit to Colorado over the weekend.  It's been so hot here, so we were looking forward to some cooler weather.  Oh well!  It was in the 90's in Colorado Springs and most people there don't have air conditioning, so we stayed hot and sweaty through the whole visit.  It's been about five years since we moved from Colorado to Kansas- Peter and I were both amazed at all the growth and the building that has gone on since then!  We were happy to visit family and friends but it's nice to be back home in our quiet little town which has no traffic, no traffic lights, no parking meters and we rarely hear a siren.

We had lunch with our friends Sandy and Tom.  Sandy isn't a quilter;  she is a weaver and has done a lot of study on Navajo rugs.  This is one of her finished rugs hanging in her house with the blade of a ceiling fan in the way in this photo. 

This rug she has started and says it will take her a few years to finish - it looks like it will be spectacular when it is done.

Lunch was in the back yard, where Tom has created a stream that flows into a little pond, all surrounded by flowers and a rock garden planted by Sandy. 

We also visited friends that live up in the foothills to the west of Colorado Springs.  They have a spectacular view of Colorado Springs and the plains to the east of town.

Last Friday I couldn't figure out why all of a sudden my blog was being visited by dozens of people!  I was surprised to find out it was because my blog was chosen as the AQS Blog of the Week on their Facebook page! I'm really flattered and if I can figure out how to do it, I will post the little button they sent.