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!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
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 :-).
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 :-).
Saturday, June 13, 2009
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!
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!
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!
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