When you hear the phrase What's Happening, do you think of that show from the late 70s? I do. Yes I am old enough to remember it but thankfully I look younger than I really am.
Anyways...to answer the question...not much really. And that is a bummer. Normal everyday life is busy as usual. Work. Laundry. Kids. Dirty dishes. The typical stuff that eats up creative time.
At least on Friday I was able to accomplish this!
While I'm still waiting for Joey's 100 Good Wishes quilt to come back from my longarm quilter, I finally have time to start getting to know Penelope. There are no deadlines on my calendar so what I choose to do next is totally up to me. Yippee !
I hadn't touched her since I brought her home and set her up 3 months ago. The 1st thing that needed to be fixed was the fact that I had one part of the carriage on backwards, so off came the take up bar so that I could turn it around. Let me tell you, lifting up a 75 lb machine and flipping that board around and then getting the machine back on the carriage in a good spot wasn't an easy task by myself but I did it.
Once that was complete, I added the furniture mover pads under the legs to make sliding the frame out on the carpet when I want to quilt much easier. I brought my laptop upstairs to my studio so that I could watch the How To videos while learning where to oil my machine, how to thread her and how to load a quilt. The fact that the Windows Media Player on it kept getting hung up made this part take much longer than it should have. I ended up watching them on the desktop in the 1st floor office, pausing it and running back up stairs to do each bit. At least I got lots of exercise. You can chuckle at me for being willing to admit that at first I pinned the backing onto the wrong bar and had to change it before I could load the top.
This is just some really cheap practice fabric that I bought from the big W store and some left over batting. For my 1st messy practice stitches I didn't want to waste perfectly good fabric and using this nasty stuff keeps me from feeling guilty about its eventual destination..the trash bin. I know that I will never use fabric from that place for anything but practicing. Trust me, it doesn't feel nice at all.
Unfortunately I had to go pick up the kids from summer camp right after I snapped this photo so no actually stitching was accomplished. Then Saturday we ran a bunch of errands and the rest of the day was spent cleaning for our pending Sunday to Monday house guest. To top it off I came down with a summer cold yesterday morning. I sure hope I'll be up to actually turning Penelope on and testing her out this week but only time will tell.
I hope you are able to find some creative time yourself this week.
4 of you added your own colorful comments:
what...????? you are working on Penelope???
I don't know how the stretch frame loads but with mine I can load two different ways so in the beginning I had taped up the pages on the wall that showed how to load AND where to oil...
oil the bobbin area more often than the top, the bottom I oil with every other bobbin or 3, the top once when I get a new top on or if it needs it. if it's been sitting for a LONG time then I do it too
It will be fun to get to know Penelope up close and personal. Feel better soon.
Just in case you didn't know... I use the same piece of practice fabric several times because I use different colors of thread. Have fun getting to know Penelope.
I am glad to see you getting acquainted with your long arm! You are going to love it. I do as Kathy up there does - I use the same practice fabric over and over with different thread until the buildup is too much to quilt over. LOL Also regarding thread...my first order of Glide just came in so I'll give a review soon - I have a custom quilt on the frame now that I'm going to try it out on. *fingers crossed*
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