Thank You, Thank You, Thank You...

I had the ladies over this afternoon for my second annual quilting get together. Well we do more socializing than anything else, but we at least talk about quilting :-). What a wonderful afternoon it was! It is so nice to spend a day with quilting friends, with no outside interruptions... (my son and DH are off playing Paint Ball :-).

But I do want to share with you why I am Thankful. I am Thankful, because Anne, one of my friends who does quite a bit of sewing, looked at my problem with the Superior Rainbow thread on the Bernina 830 and suggested I try one of two things. Either I switch to a single whole plate or I move my needle over two positions to the left. Since the machine was all set up. I moved the needle. And what do you know.... NO MORE SKIPPED STITCHES and NO MORE SPIT UP ON THE BACK WITH THREAD BREAKAGE!!! I am so excited!!! Teri, my friend who teaches machine quilting sat down at my 'Baby' as she puts it, and gave it a spin.... it worked like a charm. Of course, I had to prove it for myself, and it ran smoothly.

So what was the difference... why the needle position? Anne says that sometimes it is just the way the thread comes down and makes contact with the bobbin. She has experienced the same thing on broadcloth, and needed to make the change.

So... time to clean up the kitchen and get to stitching. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You Anne...

BTW, now I have to let Bob at Superior Thread and Alex Anderson know that the problem is fixed. Both tried suggestion, after suggestion and none of their ideas worked :-)

Mother Natures Inspiration

Last Saturday I walked out my front door and stopped... my perennial garden was just coming into mid bloom and I had to take a picture. I was too lazy to go back in the house to find my camera, so I grabbed my cell phone and took some shots. After a week of looking at the photo as my wallpaper on my cell phone it hit me... ah ha....
I had been working on this play piece. Something to play with while I got acquainted with my 830 and the Aurifil thread my friend Alex Veronelli (link for those of you one facebook) sent me last month. (If anyone knows of an Aurifil shop in southern NY... Please let me know.) Anyway... I had been working on this piece, making feathers around the center flower (I am just learning how to make feathers freehand), but couldn't decide what to do as the background quilting, or in the boarders. Well as I gazed at my flowers (all yellow and pink and green) it hit me. The play piece was of a large pink and yellow flower... why not applique daisy's in the boarder squares and use a freeform continuous line leaf pattern for the background.... sort of flowers and leaves and feathers... all from Mother Nature.

And so this week, that is what I did. I ripped out all the original background echo quilting that I wasn't happy with and used the same pink, yellow and orange variegated Aurifil Mako Cotton thread to make the daisy's and the leaves in the boarder. Then I used Sulky cotton in a brown to match the background and did the leaves all around the center flower and feathers I had previously done.While I am still learning what tension settings to use on what thread on the 830, I was happy with my play. I've decided I like the weight of the Aurifl Mako thread for quilting you want to show. Next I need to play with the lighter weight for quilting I want to sink into the top. Anyway, here are some more pics....

This last picture I took this morning, so the color is better. It was just so funny, that Alex had sent me a variegated, yellow and pink thread.... it worked really well with the fabrics I had already pulled together. The boarder fabric is a piece of Ricky Tims hand dyes... I love this particular piece so much I bought 3 yds when at his Super Seminar this past spring. Yummm...

Ok, so not perfect, but a play peice is just that... I learned alot about the stitch speed on the Bernina 830 and tension setting depending on the thread. I guess it is about time I went back to work on all those UFO's I started in the last 6 months. I think I have at least 3 :-)... definitely not my style. I feel guilty... but hey I had to play with my new machine. RIGHT!!!

Yes, frogging is ok...

Tonight, for the first time in almost two weeks, I sat down at my machine to quilt. Boy, how I missed the mindless play. That is, until I realized that I had sewn, ripped and re-sewn the same area at least five or six time. Wait... for those of you who now me, I am not a perfectionist when it comes to free motion quilting. Yes, I like things to look nice, but why in the world was I re-quilting the same area so many times on a piece that was supposed to be a play piece to get to know what my 830 could really do? What in the world was I doing... you don't frog a play piece over and over again.

Well, I guess it was at that moment that I realized that it was ok, to use my seam ripper as just another tool in the quilting process, just like my rotary cutter is an important tool in piecing. Would I use a strip that was cut crooked? No, I would simply put the strip in my scrap pile and re-cut. So why not look at the seam ripper as just another tool that allows my quilting to be better... hmphhh... what a novel idea. At least for me :-)... Why do we look at the seam ripper and say 'Oh no, I have to un-sew or frog!' Why not say, 'wow that isn't what I wanted to do to, thank the lord for the seam ripper, so I fcan ix it.'?

Then I realized that quite a few of my quilting friends use their seam ripper over and over again..... never complaining. They just do it as a matter of fact. Is that why their free motion quilting is always just a bit better than mine... yes I said just a bit :-).... No seriously, doesn't a poet use an eraser? Duh!!!

Ok, so does this mean I have reached a plateau of maturity in my quilting?? Who knows, but one thing for sure, good thing I like buying thread!

I hope it helps...

A friend and fellow quilter, Teri, pointed me to a blog today. OMG... I wish I was home and not traveling. CJ has a post on threading the Bernina 830 properly, so you don't have all the tension problems... From the comments it appears that she has solved others problems more than once. So I sure hope it solves my problems. It makes sense, if you don't have the thread in all the guides, no wonder the 830 doesn't register the thread properly at times, hence the tension is off.

I will give it a try, when I get home next week. For now, I am in Miami helping my daughter, Raven, get settled in her new apartment. She starts her first real job on Monday, July 6th!

I am still alive....

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth... I have just been real busy!

Work has picked up and we are getting ready to move my daughter Raven down to Miami, to start her professional career. It is really stressful to have your first born move away. Practically my entire family still lives in Mt. Vernon, NY, a small town of 4 sq miles. I live across the street from the house that I was born in. So, to have my baby move 24 hours away by car... OMG!!! We went down to Phili today to help her load the car. She will drive to Washington and put her car on the Auto Train in the morning. My husband and I will fly down on Tuesday to meet her and help her get settled. So it has been a crazy weekend on top of a crazy month.

But I have done some quilting... I have been playing with my Bernina 830, trying to figure out why I am having such a hard time getting the machine to stitch properly with my favorite thread. The LQS where I brought my machine has told me to bring it in. It appears that there is a new software patch that does some tweaks, so I am hoping that is the problem. But today on facebook, I met another local quilter who has an 830 and it appears she and a few others with the 830 are having some of the same problems, especially when using the BSR. So if the patch doesn't fix the problem, I hope Bernina is reading all the comments on the web and working on a fix.

But, Thursday I decided to stop playing around and started a small piece... just a play piece to actually see how the 830 works on a real project vs on test sandwiches. I received some Aurifil thread from my Italian facebook friend that I wanted to try out. So I have put together a small piece and am quilting in. I LOVE the colors. The piece is brown, pink and yellow and I am quilting it with a variegated Aurifil cotton in pink, orange and yellow. I like it alot. I promise pictures of both the new thread and the piece when we get back from Miami.

For tonight, I just wanted to let you know, that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. Two weeks with no posts, is indeed a long time for me :-).

I forgot to mention!!!

While in Europe, I tried my best to find some Aurifil thread to bring home and play with. I have been hearing a lot about this thread on blogs and on facebook and wanted to try it out. Unfortunately, the closest shop that carries it by me is 2 hours away.

Since many of the bloggers I see using Aurifil are Europeans, I decided to take a look at the shop finder on their website and find a shop by my hotels/meetings in London or Paris. There was nothing real close in London, although I called one shop listed and they were closed. But I did find two business close enough to my hotel in Paris. So while in Paris, I gave them a call, as neither seemed to be quilt or patchwork shops. The first was a clothing designer, who used Aurifil threads, but no one their spoke English so I didn't bother visiting them. The second appeared to be a craft shop from the website, and even though they didn't mention Aurifil on their site, I had the concierge give them a call. I heard him specifically ask for Aurifil thread and he was told that they carried it. So I jumped in a taxi before my meeting and off I went to the shop. Well, even though it is a nice enough shop (La Boutique Modes de Travuax) they do NOT sell Aurifil. DMC (threads and flosses) and Quiterman yes, but no Aurifil. They had no idea of what I was talking about, even though I had a picture of the Aurifil display from the company website. The confusion is the word for thread is 'fil' in French, so when they heard the concierge ask for Aurifil, they just assumed fil or thread.

You can imagine my disappointment. So while in the taxi to my meeting, I posted a comment on the Aurifil facebook group page about my adventures and disappointment. Well, by the time I came out of my meeting, there was an offer by Alex Veronelli, the Product Manager to ship me some of their thread, since I had worked so hard to try and buy some. Talk about customer service! Now I can't wait until it arrives. I will be like a kid waiting for Christmas!!!

I will make sure to post some samples of my work once the thread does show up!

Alot going on....

Well, it has been a busy month. I ended May in Atlanta, then after three days home, it was off to Miami to help my oldest daughter find an apartment. Yes, my first born has graduated from college and is entering the real world of WORK. She will start her first job on July 6th in Miami. Since we have no family in Miami, we flew down and spent 2.5 days looking at 15 apartment complexes. After loosing out on her first and second choices (I quess I should have believed them, when they said 1 bdrms go fast!) we flew home last Saturday, hoping that something else would open up and it did. Sunday morning, they found out that they will have an opening June 30th! You know what they say, if it's for you, it's for you... So they performed a background and credit check on Tuesday and she passed, so the apartment is hers! (what credit???... she just graduated from college, that my husband and I payed for... I guess since she wasn't burdened with student loans and had a job offer???) I have been in my house for over 22 years, but I had no idea that with a good credit rating, you don't need a security deposit anymore... no last months rent, nothing....wow.

Anyway, I was home from Miami all day on Sunday and flew to London on Monday, then on to Paris on Wednesday and back home yesterday, Friday. This week was all business, but as you can imagine with all that back and forth, I haven't touched my new baby at all since the 30th of May. My 830 must be getting lonely. Not to worry, I will play with her tonight after Mary Anne's QQQ.

What is a QQQ (Quinquageneration's Quilt Quest)? Well it is a celebration of her 50 1/2 birthday, celebrating 5 decades of quilting, and 5 generations of quilters in her family. It sounds like it will be a wonderful afternoon. She will have quilts she has made over the last 5 decades on display, so it will be sort of a one woman quilt show, but will also include quilts made by her grandmother, mother, daughters and granddaughter. So I quess you can call it a One Family Show :-)! If you are near New Rochelle, NY stop on in (details on her blog). The program starts at 3:30pm, but the celebration is from 1-5pm est and is open to all! Check out Mary Anne's website as well, to see all that she does in the world of quilting. She is one busy lady!