Thursday, April 6, 2017

I’ve just finished itemizing and pricing my items for the Boutique. I only have ten items – not what I thought I might get done but at least it is something.

I also have all my show items labeled and in the bags ready for transport. We are supplied XXL zippered plastic bags with strict instructions on how the quilt label goes on and what shows through the plastic. It seems sort of silly when all you are putting in is a 5″ x 5″ fabric card, but they asked for it so they are getting it.

My car will be full tomorrow. I already have two tables loaded and a box of White Elephant items from a Guild member who won’t be at the show. I’ve got several bags full of items and lists on top of each of them so I know what to add at the last minute. I have lists for Friday, I have lists for Saturday, and Sunday I will have to reverse all those lists to make sure I bring everything home again.

I went out just before lunch and got the coffee supplies (both for set-up and the House Concert) and the float for the Boutique. I’ll go have my shower now and then I’ll have to finish packing up for tonight’s meeting. I managed to get my report written this morning since most of what I report on comes through e-mail and I had to sort through my e-mail to get all the show information I needed.

And I still have two sets of placemats that need to have the hand stitching done. It will be a late night again (I was up stitching until past midnight last night).

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

I was working on placemats today at the bee. Since I needed to do some straight line stitching as well as some free-motion quilting I took my SUV. I hadn’t had a chance to use the walking foot on the machine before today and, once I figured out how to attach it, I was very happy with how it worked. I finished all the straight lines on the eight placemats and then moved on to the free-motion quilting.

The machine is very noisy when I free motion, and it bounces around a lot. I need to do some investigating to see if there is something I’m doing wrong or if it just the way the machine works. It seems to me that the foot, even when lowered, is a long way from the top of the sandwich – certainly much different from Ruby. When I ran out of bobbin thread just before two I decided to quit and come home.

Once I got home I finished the free-motion on one set of placemats. I hadn’t stabilized the edges on the first set and decided I wanted to do that on the others before I did any free-motion quilting. Ruby was set up with the free-motion foot, the SUV was set up with the free-motion foot, so I got Pearl out of the case. My desk is covered with “stuff” so I set Pearl on the outer edge of Ruby’s table and they got along very well!

I’d better get back to it as tomorrow I’ll have to take a break and work on my Cranberry Hall reports.