Gave my mother-in-law the quilt for Christmas. She cried. Said she loved it and thought it was just wonderful, so I'm happy it was appreciated :)

Have started my next project -- a log cabin for the guest room. I worry that I may be doing it slightly wrong, in that the two colors (yellow and blue) go from light to darker. As I look through the instruction book now, I see that in general the light shades stayed about the same hue, and the same with the dark colors. Ah well, I can do whatever I want, cuz it's my quilt!

Binding...

I think I really hate doing the binding. It just takes forever, and the little backstitches are just so darn picky. But I'm almost done with this quilt! Once I pulled it off the frame and put it on the ground to look at it, I was blown away at how good it looked. I was expecting it to suck, but it's actually surprisingly attractive looking. I hope Graham's mom likes it...

Done quilting

Huzzah, I have finally finished quilting the quilt top. Ran into a lot of problems towards the end that were kind of frustrating -- I'm not sure why my Bailey sometimes barfs a lot on the bobbin side of the stitching, but I hate when it does it. Thankfully, it really only did it on the outside of the edges of the quilt, so I don't even have to worry about it.

On to the binding!

I hate seam ripping...

So last night I intended to quilt as much as possible on my quilt. I did one and a half rows, quickly, easily, and was feeling pretty happy with myself. And then...I realized that my pantograph pattern had shifted the night before when we were mucking around with the machine, and so everything I had done in the last hour was completely wrong. And that I would have to seam rip it all.

NOT fun.

Husband and I seam ripped for about 30 minutes, and it's going to take another hour or so to undo everything I did last night. *sigh*

Tree Skirt Completed

I suck. I haven't posted in a month. Ah well. I finally completed the tree skirt recently, so I figured I had better post about that:

I've started working on the quilting of the Irish Chain that is intended to be a Christmas gift for my mother-in-law. I'm really not sure if I'm going to get it done in time, but I'll try my best.

Snow is in the air...

I finally started practicing making snowflakes with the laser, and it's actually quite hard. Following that line with your laser dot requires precision and a lot of practice. My goal is to practice every night for the rest of the week, and then do the quilting this weekend.

"Laser"

Hooray, my laser arrived last night. I wasn't feeling very well, so I didn't play with it much, but we put the batteries in, and could see upon turning it on that it was MUCH better than the laser that came with the Bailey. We just need to hook it up to my frame tonight, and away I go...

Almost there...

We finally got the carriage all set up, after some difficulties: everything was set up and we were trying it out, when we realized the black plastic tracks that the top carriage run on, were covered with gauges and scratches. That's not good for having smooth stitching! We ended up cannibalizing the tracks from the GMQ Pro box that was incorrectly sent to us...but finally, everything was set up as I desired, and it all works perfectly!

The only thing I'm waiting on now is the Grace laser. The one that comes with the Bailey is, to be frank, complete crap. The new laser is in the mail and should be here soon; in the meantime, I've been practicing my starting and stopping stitches, and have gotten quite good at it :)

Further Frustration...

So my new carriage arrived last night, but we couldn't get it set up -- the screws we were using before for the older carriage won't work on the wheels for this one. So we have to go to Lowes tonight to buy new ones (as well as find a way to get the laser to go on). Fingers crossed that everything will be set up and I can finally do some real testing tonight.

Grace Frame Company Rocks!

Grr, frustration! I ordered my carriage upgrade for my Little Gracie II -- from Allbrands.com. Big mistake!! They sent the wrong carriage, and not only that, but part of it was broken. Returns with Allbrands take forever (if you can even get them to agree to the return), and they charge a 15% restocking fee. Ridiculous.

So I contacted the Grace Company directly, and they're sending me out a new carriage upgrade immediately, free of charge, as well as the pre-paid postage to send back the wrong carriage upgrade. They really are awesome -- every time I've spoken to them, they've been helpful, sent me any missing parts immediately, etc. And here they are fixing this situation when I didn't even order directly from them. They rule!

Tree Skirt Top Finished!

Huzzah, I'm done with the top of the tree skirt. It's pretty crappy, to be honest, but so long as no one looks at it too closely, it should work well enough. I definitely learned some lessons from working on this:

- starch is your friend (although I'm going to give sizing a try next)
- putting little sandpaper circles on the bottom of your plastic rulers makes a world of difference as far as slipping
- fine-pointed Sharpie markers are great for marking cutting lines on fabric
- Illustration board (medium weight cardboard) is awesome for making templates. Doesn't bend or flex as the pen moves alongside it.
- DON'T try to modify your pattern after you've already started...

My new upgraded carriage for my Little Gracie II should be arriving today. Can't wait to try it out. All we need to do after that is get the laser affixed, and I should be able to start practicing for reals!

Changed Plans

I've been working on a tree skirt for the past few weeks, and got partway through it when I realized that the skirt was too small (45" in diameter). What to do? I had already cut the fabric, so enlarging the pattern was not going to work. So I decided to add to the tree skirt to make it bigger in diameter.

Probably not the smartest thing to do, as making a pattern that is repeatable on an arc is really hard. My husband and I spent several hours trying to do geometry and make something that looked nice, and got nowhere. I thought of a new, simpler pattern last night, though, and I'm gonna give that a try this weekend.

My newest obsession

So for years, I've wanted to make quilts. My grandmother was a quilter, and I remember the lovely quilts that she made over the years. But I unfortunately never got the chance to learn from her, and I never had the courage to try it on my own...until earlier this year.

My friend Nikki, who has made a few quilts in the past, agreed to teach me what she knew. I chose to do a double Irish chain, as it seemed fairly simple, and with some trepidation, sat down to be taught how to make blocks. To my surprise, it was actually fairly simple (and fun!) to do. I finished my quilt top in a matter of weeks.

And then came the hard part -- the actual quilting. This to me is the most intimidating part of quilting. I tossed out the idea of handquilting as Nikki does, as I do not have the patience to work on a single project for months on end. That leaves tying (ugly, IMO), and machine quilting. So machine quilting it is.

I did a lot of research into how to do machine quilting, and quickly decided that trying to force a large quilt through the throat of a small machine would be an exercise in frustration. Once I learned about machine frame quilting, I knew that was what I wanted to do. My first purchase was a Little Gracie II frame, with a Juki TL98QE. Big mistake on the latter choice -- it has only a 9" throat, which is still too small to do much with.

So then I purchased a 15" Bailey Homequilter a few weeks ago. Despite some early frustrations in getting it working properly, everything is hunky-dory now, and I love working with it. I am sticking to practicing at this point, with the goal of finishing the quilt in time for Christmas as a gift for my mother-in-law. Stay tuned to find out if that actually happens ;)