Where has time gone?

I guess I have just been that busy...time has flown by.


Here are some of the things I've been up to since my last post.

1. Laundry
2. Cooking supper
3. Cleaning house
4. Taxi for the kids
5. Work


Hey wait a minute, you don't want to hear about those things do you? WE ALL have been doing those things right?


How about the Quilty things I've been doing, do you want to hear about those?

1. 5$ BOM at Sew Original
2. Binding my Interpolation quilt
3. longarm quilting a customer's quilt
4. Scrap Therapy (my stash is now taking shape)
5. Teaching a Row quilt at my church to new quilters
6. Sewing my scrap quilt with Leaders and Enders


Sometimes there just isn't enought time to quilt, be a working-homemaker wife and mom and look a the computer. I would rather give up the title of working mom and just be a quilting homemaker, wife and mom. Not necessarily in that order. Wife and mom come first.


Hopelully, I'll have some pictures of the different projects I've been working on very soon.

Meet Maxine

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce you to a new friend. She is reliable, always there for me when I need her and able to make me smile with no words at all.

This new friend is Maxine, Gammill Premier Plus. I expect to spend a lot of time with Maxine. Together we will be able to solve so many quilty problems.

I hope you get to meet her some day, but if not, I do hope you have such a wonderful good friend in your sewing room.

Wall hangings for the "Quilt Cave"

Have you seen a longarm machine in person. Those things are big. Since we had one on the way, we had to start making room. The basement was to be the new home for my Gammill. Just like when you have a new baby on the way, you have to prepare the nursery. So it is when you have a large piece of machinery on the way. We cleaned, painted (twice, I didn't like the first color), put up walls, stripped and painted the floor, and added a ceiling to the unfinished basement. (We thought we could do it in a month) LOL.

When the baby arrived, we still weren't done, but almost. Now the basement has changed names. It is no longer the "nursery" for the baby, it is the "Quilt Cave". Maxine's new home. To decorate, she helped me complete these wall hangings. The lighter orange and the orange cream background are the

colors of the walls. I have pulled the teal and green as accent colors. I think it turned out pretty good.

The New addition

Back before Christmas, I made my first attempt at machine quilting. It was a learning quilt for me. The blocks were my first BOM, my first machine piecing, my first queen size quilt, then the first time I tried to machine quilt. A QUEEN SIZE!!! What was I thinking? I did pretty good with the "in the ditch" quilting. Straigth lines really weren't that bad. Then the meandering around the setting triangles, still not too bad. But then the inside squares were a nightmare for me.


I had toyed with the idea of getting a longarm for a while. Test driving them at the quilt shows, then in the local shops really gave me the bug. That little nagging that just wouldn't go away. On Good Friday, I made a date with the only local Gammill rep for NC. The husband wanted to know, "Just how big is this thing, really?" Well, he saw impressed with what he saw and gave me the go ahead.


While in Paducah in April, I was able to test drive all of the different brands of machines in one location. I highly recommend this approch. It is jsut like test driving a new car. You need to feel the power of the machine in your hands. Feel the responsiveness in the curves. Feel the braking power.


In June, I received my Gammill Premier Plus, her name is Maxine. We have already become very close. I could hardly wait to load the first quilt. Of course the it was the 'learning' quilt that I had started before Christmas. (Still untouched) Yet another learning experience. I had no desire to just pantograph the thing. I wanted to drive Maxine on the open road. It felt good.


I'm sure I'll have more to say about Maxine as I continue to post, but that is enough for now. The quilt you see here is that learning quilt. It is named "Baskets of Knowledge".