Life here continues to go on at the speed of light. It seems like there simply are not enough hours in a day to do everything. I know for sure that I’m not the only one with this problem. I have been meaning to write up a blog post since last Friday. But every time I think of it, something else comes up, and before I know it, the day is finished, so I think to myself, I’ll do it tomorrow. and of course the same thing happens. Now this past weekend, there was a good reason for it. Our little grandson Avery was here for a visit.
Except that he’s not so little any more. He is full of energy, that boy. This os the only good picture of him that I managed to catch. Of all the pictures I took, although there weren’t that many since I was too busy enjoying having him around, they were all blurry because he was moving so fast. He left to go home Sunday afternoon. I was going to do up a Sunday stash and stitching report that day, and for the life of me, I can’t remember even what I did for the rest of the day. Oh right, now I remember, I spent quite a bit of it talking to friends on Facebook chat. Monday, I spent quietly stitching and trying to get my breath back after the weekend. I’d planned on doing the stash and stitching post that day...... didn’t happen. Tuesday I spent up in the sewing room, working on one of my own projects, interspersed with emails back and forth to APQS regarding the state of my long arm machine. Preliminary diagnosis is that it needs a new motor. I haven’t heard anything since Tuesday when they were planning on putting in the motor, so I’m wondering if they’ve come across the other weird things the machine was doing before I sent it in. I think this is the fourth week without it now, which means I am four weeks behind in all the customer quilts I have waiting here. If you are one of those, I profoundly apologize, but there is nothing I can do, at the moment. When I do get it back, the focus will be on getting all those quilts done.
This is the project I was working on Tuesday.
It’s one of my own designs, done up in EQ7. It’s a variation of the Sister’s Choice block. I’ve decided that I’m naming it “Sisters Across the Miles” in honour of my friend Susan in Alberta. I’m seriously contemplating publishing some patterns. I have 5 or 6 that are my own designs that I could write up. The hows and whens are details yet to be figured out. Our son is a fabulous photographer who has offered to do up pictures of the quilts and his girl friend is a web designer. I’m not sure at the moment whether I’ll add them to this blog, or actually do up a website. These are excitingly scary thoughts. At the moment, the trick is going to be finding the time to get the patterns written up.
So, this take me up to yesterday which was also partially spent sewing in the studio, working on the sampler quilt that I’ve designed as a free project for the guild’s blog. The picture here is a bit washed out.
I’m trying to stay as far ahead of the publishing dates as I can. It would really be great for this to be done in time for the quilt show in October so that everyone can see what their finished quilt can look like. The instructions for it, should you be interested, can be found on the
London Friendship Quilters’ Guild blog. And of course, in amongst all this has been lots and lots of visits and hugs and snuggles with our precious grand daughter Abrielle. She is 4 months old today. How that went by so fast is totally beyond me. Here they are,
our daughter Becca and grand daughter Abrielle. So now, after catching up here, I am going to link up to Lorna’s
Let’s Bee Social and then go get some more work done on that blog sampler.
Scott and I spent the remainder of Tuesday and all of Wednesday putting her back together. That was a long and stressful job. The carriage got some new wheels, so that had to be done before the sewing machine head could go back on the carriage. This is a close up of one of the wheels.
Once that was done, the machine head, which weighs somewhere around 60 pounds, had to be reconstructed, meaning the light and the handles and the wheel axels had to be put back on, and then the whole thing slid onto the carriage. Did I mention it was Scott and I doing this? By the time al the re-assembly was done, it was late Wednesday afternoon. I’d done a test run just to see if she turned on and functioned, which she did, and called it a successful day. Oh, did I mention cleaning of the table of the long arm frame???... I thought not. Thursday, we got to spend the afternoon with Abbie, since Becca had appointments during that afternoon. Grampy indulged in some silliness, 
deciding to try and see what Abbie looked like with hair, not very successfully. She has gotten quite mobile, just in the last couple of days, with figuring out how to turn from her front to back and then back to front. She now knows she can get places doing that. The days of being able to put her down and thinking that she’ll stay in one spot are gone. After Becca got home, I went and gave the machine a test run. All I can say is WOW! I have been working with a seriously crippled machine for a very long time! She now runs so smoothly and so quietly. In no time at all I had the baby quilt that was on the frame finished.
