2016- Walking Down Memory Lane

2016- A year of finished quilts and dreams in the making.

 

2016 was a big year.  I started this blog, finished a handful of quilts from my WIP stack (hopefully you were able to, too), Millie joined our family, and we made the decision to open the quilt shop– Quilter’s Hideaway.  2016 was a big year, but 2017 will be a ginormous year!

 

Here is a small roundup of a few projects throughout the year.  Let’s walk down memory lane, or at least the last few months. 🙂

Between these quilts and learning to quilt on Millie, it has been a great year for learning new things and spending time at the machine.  Now, I promised myself I would start the New Year with a clean sewing room (YIKES!), so I better go get started.  If you don’t hear from me for a few days send reinforcement, please!

 

See you at the machine (I’m sure I’ll find my way there more than once while cleaning),

•Care

 

 

 

 

Final WIP Week Of 2016!

Oh my goodness, it is DECEMBER! It is also the first full week of a new month, and you know what that means. It is WIP WEEK!

For those of you new to the blog, the first full week of each month is work-in-progress week also known as WIP Week. It is one week where you try your hardest to not start anything new, and instead drag out a project sitting in your unfinished pile and get to work. It is one week where we hope to mark something off the to-do list. One week. That’s all it is. 

If you are anything like me (someone tell me I’m not alone) you have a closet or box or cubie or hidey-hole full of projects you haven’t finished. Some are one seam away from being finished or one page in a scrapbook or one something away from finishing anything while other projects might take several WIP Weeks to finish up. Set this week aside and avoid starting new things. It doesn’t have to have to be a sewing project. Just something in your life you want marked off the never ending to-do list. 

Working with a group to finish projects is much more enjoyable than dragging through it alone. Share your pictures, tag us, use the hashtag #QHWIPWeek, let us know what you are up to; who knows, I might even show up to help ;).

Not only is this WIP Week, it is the last WIP Week of the year! Have you been avoiding a calendar like I have? This week is the last week to finish up those WIP’s and start new in 2017, or at least finish up your Christmas projects in time to get them under the tree. 

Now, let’s get to work. I will be working away on this little one.  Well, hopefully these two… I’m also hoping to get a couple quilts quilted and on their way.

Here we go!

See you at the machine,

•Care
 

Quilter’s Hideaway Has Furniture!

Hi there everyone! It is raining outside and we are supposed to be decorating our house for Christmas, but instead I am sitting here with a half-assembled tree thinking about how wonderful this past weekend was and writing this blog. I sure hope no one realizes I’m slacking ;).

 

Did you have a fantastic Thanksgiving? We had everyone at our house for a late lunch/early dinner that was yummy. There was more food than we could finish, lots of laughter, and the kitchen was clean by the end of the day. I couldn’t ask for anything more. I love how both of our families (my husband’s and mine) get along so well.  It makes holidays easier and life greater.

After dinner we went out to a few shops to see what the big sales were. We didn’t purchase much at all, but we saw quite a few baskets piled high.

 

 

Friday morning I went to one store and spent over an hour in line. After that, I decided I was finished with Black Fridayshopping, and we headed to IKEA with an empty trailer.

 

We spent about an hour walking through the store seeking out different items and options. Then, we found a spot to sit and regroup. We wrote down what we needed to look for in the self service area.  We realized a few of our items were not in the self service area, and there were a couple things we wanted to look at again.

 

With our list organized and our plan set we marched through the showcase floor once more and found a lady named Rachel to help with our items that were not in the self-service area. She turned out to be an amazing help and organized our entire list for us based on aisles and checked inventory. This is when we realized a few things were out of stock. She walked with us to find other options and once again helped us to get a plan in place. She was fantastic!

 

This time, with our list in hand we scooted down to the first floor-the self service area. If you have never been to IKEA, almost all of their items come in flat packs. When you arrive at the store you walk around the second floor to see different rooms assembled with their furniture. Each item has a tag with an aisle number and bin number. You write down the information and when you finish you head down to the first floor and pull all of the furniture yourself. There are few exceptions where the staff will have items pulled for you to pick up after checking out (Rachel did this for us).

 

 

So with our LONG list, we found the elevator and headed downstairs. My parents laughed when I told them we would each need a cart, but it turns out we needed a total of 5 carts. It was crazy, but so fun and exciting.

 

We stuck to plan until we got to the chair aisle and my dad decided to mix it up. A last minute decision meant we had three different chairs on our cart. We also couldn’t find three of our originally planned chairs but it worked out for the best and we found an even better chair (in my opinion).

 

Loaded down and struggling to push the carts we headed to check out.

 

 

 

**I just got caught!! A certain someone just walked in and realized my tree is still only half assembled.**

 

After checking out, we waited on the last two carts with 11 more boxes then we headed for the elevator.

 

My dad decided we could fit everything into the elevator at once so it became a game and we won! We loaded the trailer and headed home.

 

When we arrived back in Bartlesville my husband and his family met us to help unload and start building. It was pretty late but we couldn’t wait.

 

Saturday morning I finished quilting another quilt just in time to head to the shop and finish assembling all of our IKEA items.

The shop is coming together and we cannot wait. It won’t be long before our doors will be open.

Remember, if you want to be the first with a calendar of classes, come see us at Gifts Marketplace on December 6th at Tri County Technology (Bartlesville, OK).

 

 

See you at the machine (but first I must finish this tree),

 

•Care

Standing at the Start Line

Everyone has to have a starting point. This is mine.

 

Not that long ago I wrote a blog post about us opening some very special boxes. Once we assembled our Millie, I spend almost every waking moment wanting to sew with her.

This weekend, I was able to take a two day class on quilt path, Millie’s brain/computer quilting system. There was so much information and I am very tired, but I have 20 pages of notes to hopefully pull me through and remember everything that was said.

It was an incredible class that was both informational and fun. It also left my mind wandering to new quilt ideas and more projects (because we all need more of those, right?). Saturday’s class started at 9am and we dove right in. When class ended around 5pm I just wanted to jump behind the machine and apply many of the skills we had learned in simulation mode during class.

After class I drove straight to my parents house, loaded my first actual quilt, not just pieces of fabric sandwiched together, and got to work. Nerves were high as I leaned in to push the SEW button, but everything functioned fairly well.

There was a bobbin change, a thread break, safe zone areas to set, patterns to resize, repeat, and nest, and so much more.  I think I might need a checklist to remember the common steps for the next few quilts.

Quilt pieced by Nance Allen

My weakest area is either setting the numbers for pattern sizes and thinking through that aspect of the loading process, or the last partial row at the bottom of a quilt. This row was causing a few challenges last night while quilting.

I thought I just had a problem with my pattern or a setting. I wasn’t sure, so after finishing my first quilt I loaded a second– determined to figure out what was happening.

I should clarify that the problem I was having was manually working through the jumps and a system error between the computer and the machine. There may have also been a few errors with the users brain. It happens. It was still sewing fine, occasionally there would be a thread break sensor go off when the thread was fine or it would start tracing a pattern when it was supposed to be sewing.  With each issue I was able to back it up and restart at the stitch the problem started on without changing the end result of the quilt.

With the second quilt loaded, a pattern imported, and settings seemingly happy I dove in. Unfortunately I had the same issues on the second quilt as I had with the first.

Quilt pieced by Nance Allen

Thankfully, when I returned to class today I was able to ask a handful of questions and come up with a game plan on trouble shooting to find an answer. No matter what, she still sews beautifully and I can work around this hiccup manually instead of automatically for now.

I am just so thrilled with how each quilt turned out. I love watching Millie sew and thinking through how to enhance different quilts with different quilting designs and concepts. It opens an entire new element to quilting.

Sew you at the machine,

•Care

Millie Hums

We went on vacation this last week and I completely checked out on technology. It was wonderful, but I am happy to be back!

I missed WIP Week for this month, but I did spend some time working on an unfinished project. I hope you did too! See my last post for more about my WIP Project. It was an English Paper Pieced quilt designed by Mickey Depre (Her patterns are fabulous!).

We flew back home late Friday night and yesterday (Saturday) I spent on a date with Millie. If you remember, we had a few boxes delivered the week before I left town. Those boxes turned into an amazing, APQS longarm machine. I AM IN LOVE! Sorry My Love, you might have a little competition.

Back to Millie- Her full name has turned into Millennium Falcon thanks to one of my awesome Brother-in-Law’s suggestions. For short, we will still call her Millie. The week before we left I was able to get her all assembled, we plugged her in, saw lights turn on, then I had to leave and drive back to my house. This was so tough! It was just before midnight when we saw her lights turn on, so we were not able to actually hear her hum.

The week was crazy and I wasn’t able to get back to her before leaving town. Thankfully, I had a great distraction-Disney World. Though I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about sewing with her every day.

Back to yesterday. Yesterday I finally got to not only turn her on and hear her hum!

At first, I loaded on a couple fat quarters to check tension and play with settings on QuiltPath, the computer program she is able to work with and we have conveniently named “Millie’s Brain”. Here is what we came up with.

After this was finished, I decided to work with a larger area and loaded a little over a yard top and a backing then played more. This time I didn’t have a plan and just wanted to try different things.

I wasn’t looking up tutorials or spending too much time fighting through settings because I am taking a two-day class next weekend. This was just a time to get my hands dirty.

The first row I was hoping to alternate a teddy bear and crosshatching. Everything went well for the teddy bear, then it moved to do the crosshatching, but instead of making a jump, it sewed the transition line. “It is just a test piece,” I reminded myself, though I was already looking for a seam ripper to mend this mistake. On the next jump from crosshatch to teddy bear I thought I could trick it and stop her right after finishing the crosshatch then move it to the start of teddy bear and search for closest stitch. In theory it sounded like a fabulous idea, but in action it just didn’t work. I moved along to a new row.

Another issue I came across was that sometimes after starting a block, setting the safe areas and where the block should sew, Millie would move through the pattern, but wasn’t stitching. I was able to jump in the middle of it and get her to start stitching again, but I couldn’t figure out how to back up and get her to fix what she missed.   I’m hoping to clear this up with a YouTube video or in class next weekend.

I’m very happy with how everything is going so far even with this learning curve. I’m glad I was able to start playing and come across these issues ahead of time.

After coming across a few issues I decided to take a stab at freehand quilting. I turned QuiltPath off and unlatched her from the belts to give me full control. Once ready, my mind went blank and I had no idea what to quilt. I started with a simple “hello!” and I forgot halfway through how to write cursive- brain fart!

Next up I played with writing “Quilter’s Hideaway.” Remember that surprise I hinted at a few posts back? Here is another part of it. I’m going to let you slowly put pieces together as I share hints and clues.

With that, I moved on to some meandering, straight lines, and a box. I also tried pebbles in a smaller box, but my goodness, this will need some work.

I hope you enjoy this journey with Millie. I cannot wait to continue learning and sharing along the way.  I already realize I will need to come up with a better option for getting pictures of the quilting.  Often it was hard to get the stitches to show up.

 

See you at the machine,

•Care

What happened to the weekend?

Happy Monday!

Where did the weekend go? I was hoping to get some time in the sewing room, but this weekend really got away from me.

I did spend a little bit of time behind a machine, sewing with a couple friends, but it was not long enough. I was helping them on their Merry, Merry Snowmen quilts which are looking fantastic. I cannot wait to see all of ours finished. Mine is still lacking borders, let’s not talk about that. Hopefully this is the week to see those borders come together.

Today, I thought I would share a little project I have enjoyed working on in the past- Memory Bears.

When my grandfather passed away, no one knew what to do with his clothes. I asked my grandmother if I could have a few of his shirts. At the time I was not sure what I would do with them, but I knew I would come up with something. He was a hero in every definition of the word. I wanted something to remember him with.

One shirt I used to make a memory bear for my grandmother for Christmas.
I used McCalls pattern 4275 with few alterations. Most notably, I cut the buttons off the buttons and attached them down the front of the bear.  
This is possibly my favorite thing I have ever made. It has many memories sewn into every stitch. 

Part of this shirt was also sewn into my wedding dress as my something old and something blue. 

 

After making my first Memory Bear, my brother asked me to make two more for a friend. I changed them each slightly. I love the possibilities for these bears and how different each one looks depending on what the shirt style, material, and fabric pattern were. 

What are you working on this week? I am hoping to have a bit more time behind the machine than last week. 

See you at the machine,

•Care