Good Sunday, everyone:
We're finally enjoying a beautiful week-end here in Calgary after hail and localized flooding this past week. Thank goodness we weren't flooded, although we did get the hail. It's amazing how a few blocks can make a difference in the weather you get here. I'm looking forward to "summer" finally starting!
In case you're cruising the internet this afternoon, check out the blog posting at Buttermilk Basin Design Studio. They are giving away $50.00 in free patterns - your choice! Sounds like a great opportunity to me as I love getting new patterns, especially if I can get them free. But you'll need to hurry as this giveaway is only open until 11:00 p.m. tonight - and I think that's 9:00 p.m. my time.
Good luck and enjoy the rest of your week-end.
If you've been reading my posts, you'll know that I design, make and quilt my quilts myself. I have a B-Line 18 mid-arm sewing machine on a B-Line Studio Frame. In simple terms, I have a large wooden frame in my basement with a large sewing machine on it so I can machine quilt my projects. I really like the B-Line products from To Be Quilting and have never had any problems until I got this machine. For some reason, I have been having stitching issues with it. I've tried all the usual remedies and Julie and Horst from To Be Quilting have gone above and beyond in helping me with these problems. They've even stopped in and spent a few hours trying to rectify this situation. Finally, we changed out the encoder wheels and this has fixed the problem (cross your fingers!). But what I really wanted to note was how much time you can spend quilting a quilt when your machine isn't really performing up to par.
Up until this problem was fixed, my typical quilting session was to start quilting, stop after about 5 minutes, unstitch the previous stitches, start all over again, stop again, unstitch the stitches - well, you can imagine. I would spend hours, even days, quilting a lap-size quilt. Of course the frustration level was high - and the air was often blue - as I tried to adjust and continue on. But I was determined to persevere and finish that quilt.
Now that my machine is running smoothly (thank you long-arm gods!), I can't believe how quickly I can finish a quilt. I just completed two charity quilts for Victoria's Quilts in Calgary and was astounded that I did one in one afternoon and the other in one evening. This included loading the quilt on the frame and deciding on the thread and quilt motif that I would use (probably the longest part of the process).
I finally realize why my friend, Cathy, a long-arm quilter, couldn't understand why it was taking me so long to get my quilts quilted. 'Cause after all, "it ain't a quilt until it's quilted"! Hopefully now I'll have lots more "quilts" in the house.
Note: I no longer own the B-Line 18 machine as I have sold it and upgraded to a Handi Quilter Infinity as of December 2015.
Kim
Last week-end, I took a drive in the country with my daughter, Sarah. We weren't looking for fruit stands, but rather were going to Country Creations for a mini quilt show. Now, I don't know about you, but a quilt show to me is several things: quilts (of course!), sales (even better) and quilters (the best!). Lorraine Stangness, the designer behind Country Creations, and her staff always put on an excellent show and all of the above are well represented there. Lorraine has a large quilt show every other year, but I knew that it would be worth the drive to attend this year's show and I was not disappointed.
Lorraine has several books and many patterns, the majority of which use the connector corner technique in construction. I have purchased many of her patterns over the past few years and value them for their clear, concise instructions and wonderful diagrams, usually in full colour. I purchased a few more of her patterns to add to my collection on my latest visit.
In addition to the wonderful quilts on display, Lorraine also had several of her sample quilts available for sale. Not only are they beautiful to look at, but I also admire Lorraine's quilting expertise. Lorraine teaches machine quilting at local shops and is a wonderful and informative teacher. Now I examine her samples to see how many different quilting motifs she used in that particular quilt. I'm always amazed at the selection of quilting motifs and the amount of work that she puts into her quilts, all, of course, beautifully done.
This year Lorraine was selling off some of her quilting books and I was fortunate enough to purchase several at great prices. I love collecting books and have lately started to add older books to my library. Lots of great design ideas there and many wonderful reference books. I also bought some fabrics, particularly batiks as they were on at such great prices.
If you are in the Calgary/Strathmore area next year in early July, stop in at Country Creations for the "big" quilt show. You won't be disappointed.
