First customer quilts from December!

Well i was able to get a few quilts done last week despite a couple of unexpected emergency trips to town. First off i got a call from my good friend, and fellow machine quilter, she was having some “issues” with her machine and needed some help getting it working again. Now i don’t know about you but when a good friend calls, obviously in tears, I tend to want to do my best to help her out. So with my ugly black tool boxes of every tool and extra i thought i might need in hand, i made a rush trip to her place. Well, i did make on stop first, to pick up one of her favorite drink from Starbucks to help calm her down. It took a bit of time but we got the problem fixed as well as did a little other maintenance why i had my tools handy. and another day i had to take my uncle to town to pick up a few things, manly parts to fix the furnace. Leave it to us to have a perfectly running furnace, but the instant it turns cold the darn thing breaks down. So in the middle of the night, why everyone else was sleeping soundly i was down working on the furnace trying to get it to kick on because it was getting darn cold in the house. Good thing i don’t have a problem trying to fix stuff myself huh? Anyway it didn’t take long to find the problem, after all the little blinking light on the front said it had a water backup in the drain area (talk about good luck that the thing has the little blinking lights that tell you what could be wrong!) You see the furnace drips water as it runs. No I’m not a expert so i don’t know why it does it just know that it has done it from day one, apparently its supposed to drip. Anyway the spot were the water drips is about 8 feet from were the water falls into a drain that carries the water outside the house, so there is a plastic pipe that carries the dripping water to that drain. Apparently after 20 something years of service the plastic pipe got a clog, the dripping water backed up inside the furnace and caused it to keep itself from turning on. So i removed the plastic pipe from the furnace and the water went poring out of the furnace all over the floor. for a quick fix i used a piece of old water hose to replace the plastic pipe so the furnace would run that night, and then i did a quick mop up of the nasty looking water that was all over the floor. The next morning we made a trip to get new PVC pipe to fix it properly, luckily there was no major damage to the furnace itself and all is working well.

Yap, sure was a fun week.

Now that that’s over, on to the quilts….

This Irish Chain was made by Mary H. She loves the Irish Chain pattern, and make a lot of them for charity raffles and such. It was quilted as Mary requested with a double ribbon ion the chain area and a Daisy Flower in the open white area.

This Nine Patch Star was made by Becky H. For a christmas gift. Becky always pretty much lets me quilt whatever i think will look good, so i had some fun with this one. Most of it was simple CC but the Feathers fancy it up just a bit!

This quilt, i am calling Scrappy Stars, was also made by Becky H. Once again she said do whatever with the quilting. I had to think this one over a bit but we both loved the end results.

That’s all for sharing from last week! i have five more quilts that are due by the midle of next week, so i must get back to work!

Ever have one of them days?

Well I think I finaly got this new dashboard on wordpress figured out…. third times a charm!

Ok, so this week has already been a long week and its only Wednesday. A question for all you Machine Quilters out there… Have you ever had a day that no mater what you did you just could not make yourself stand in front of your machine and make it do its thing???? Tuesday was one of those days for me. Got up early had a cup of coffee or three cups, watched a little TV pinned in a quilt, had some lunch, went back to the quilt only to turn around and walk right back out of the room walked up the stairs and took a nap. I don’t know if the sleepless nights just caught up to me or what but nothing I could do that day made me want to even look at that darn green monster of a longarm quilting machine! Well luckily it only lasted a day and Wedensday I was right back to work!

If you would like to see a better view of a photo go to my WebShots album

This scrap patch quilt was made by Billie T. With green thread, I quilted the main body of the quilt with a Continuous curve design ( C.C. ) The inner yellow border is a twisted feather, and the outer boarder is a simple swirl. Now a little something from me… this is the type of quilt that always makes me smile, it reminds me so much of the quilts that my Grammy made. Scraps left over from other projects like quilts or the scraps from the clothes she made all of us. wherever the colors landed that’s were they went. She never cared if she had two pieces alike next to one another or not. Can you tell I like this one or not?!

 

Billie also made six of these cute pillows!

I have been asked before how big of a pain can pillows be to quilt… Well they can be a big pain in the neck but I have gotten use to them! I quilt a LOT of pillows and have came up with something that works for me. When the customer sends on piece of backing fabric to do a number of pillows I do not cut it apart I leave it in one large piece and go from there. But when the customer has a number of pillows with backings cut for each one I like to pin in two backings at the same time. This way I can quilt two pillows before repining and it does seem to save some time. Not sure that it really does but it feels like it!

Well, its nearly 2:30… I’m off to dream land! Blog again soon!