Friday, December 20, 2019

December 18th, in (somewhat blurry) pictures


























Congratulations, Brandon and Taylee!!
We love you both so much and are so excited for your future together
💘

Thursday, December 12, 2019

woodland surprises



Jeremiah has been pretty desperate for a new quilt,
so in October
I decided he'd be getting one for his 16th birthday
(Dec 2nd)


I drew up a pattern
that was basically large patchwork,
but included some chaining 4 patches
a few diamond-in-a-squares
and several somewhat hidden stars,
and promptly started adding 'Jeremiah' fabrics
 to my teals collection.
(though - to be fair, it stretched from aqua to navy)


In November,
as soon as I'd finished a pattern testing project
I started cutting fabrics,
and sewing them back together.



I did this in secret,
in 10 -15 minute bursts
thanks to the knee injury
 I was (and still am) nursing.

remember, we homeschool, so secret sewing gets a bit tricksy.
I set up in our closet, because this was one that was going to have to be laid out for a few weeks

It all worked out though,
and we were able to give it to him
partially quilted on his birthday,
thanks to the Sunday afternoon
he spent at a friend's house
on December1st.


Then,
without having to be sneaky,
I re-loaded the quilt on Lucy
and added horizontal quilting.
Then hand quilted around the stars
and diagonally through the 4-patch chains.
Then added the binding
and hand-stiched it down to the front
using chunky stitches.


I finished it yesterday morning,
9 days after Jeremiah's birthday


and the boys and I
took a little walkabout
on our property in the afternoon
to snap some pictures
in some of the places Jeremiah loves.


Jeremiah is our nature boy
and his quilt is full of (some of) the outdoorsy things he is so fond of.


We love you so much, my boy!
You add laughter and fun
(and a few head shakes...)
to our family.


You are kind and gentle. Silly and smart.
Tough and teasing.
You love your mom and dad.
And most importantly,
you love our Lord.

You're well on your way to becoming an awesome man.


Happy Birthday


Monday, November 25, 2019

Terry Frey's jeweled butterly, a finished quilt


drumroll, please!

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

After 145 hours
 of cutting, sewing, pressing, and quilting,
a 4 day battle with bleeding dye,
lots of sweat,
maths
and even some tears,
we have a finished
one of a kind
quilt.

This quilt contains
117 different fabrics,
(many of them fussy cut)
2 battings
(Quilters Dream 100% wool on top of Pellon 80/20)
and 
6 different threads,
and is
- quite possibly -
the most epic quilt
I will ever make.


Terry contacted me Oct 23rd, 2018
and asked if she could commission me to make a butterfly quilt.

We messaged back and forth,
and it turned out
that what she really wanted
was a jewel-tone version 

So that is what I set out to make.


I spent a little over a month searching for
and collecting fabrics,
and made my first block
on Nov 28th


Terry wanted me to 
'put my mark' on her quilt,
which I very much appreciated,
because,
as you all know,
I'm not so great with patterns in general.
And honestly,
I'm not the biggest fan of that particular pattern
(shhhhhh).


I bought the pattern,
but I took an awful lot of liberties with it 😉

(And then,
thanks to cutting mistakes,
bad maths,
and who knows what all,
I took several more liberties...🙄)

I swapped out blocks I wasn't crazy about
and replaced them with  a bunch of self-drafted ones
(and self-drafted versions of others)


that were either meaningful,
or would help me create the look I was aiming for,
for the butterfly.


At a glance,
the quilt looks like most of the other 
but when you look more closely,
you can see I changed things up a good bit.


I worked in pairs,
making mirror images of each block,
and made the heart borders 
when we couldn't find a fabric that would work.


I finished the (3 sections) top
in mid-February.


I basted each side separately
because there was no way 
I was going to attempt to quilt
a queen-sized
double-batted quilt
on my domestic machine.

(little side note:
I thread basted one side
and that took for-e-ver,
so I spray basted the other.
The thread basted side has several small tucks and folds
quilted into the back.
So - unless you're hand-quilting,
I'd recommend spray basting with 505)

I started quilting the wing portions on February 26th
(doing my best to quilt mirror images on each side)
and finished them March 7th


For a few weeks,
I quilted the background fabric on my Janome
while also practicing quilting on the longarm.

Every time I finished a section of background,
I'd add hand quilting with silk button twist
 to outline the butterfly.


(Terry could take or leave the hand-quilting,
but I figured it wouldn't really have my mark on it
if I didn't add a least a little 😏)


Terry was in no rush for the quilt
and I had some other quilts that needed to be made
to celebrate a niece's graduation
and the arrival of a new nephew,
so I put hers on hold
while I worked on those.

Somewhere around that time,
my left shoulder started hurting really badly
and I had seriously reduced range of motion,
which made pushing that quilt
through a domestic machine near impossible.

It suddenly became really important
 to improve my longarm quilting,
because the longer my shoulder hurt,
the more I wanted to be able to finish the butterfly quilt
on the longarm.
So I focused on getting my longarms skills
on par with my domestic machine quilting skills.



Longarming was a little painful,
but not nearly as much as regular machine quilting,
and it had the benefit of being soooo much faster.

When my longarming was finally up to snuff,
I loaded up the unfinished side
and completed it amazingly fast,
and even achieved reasonably decent symmetry.


and finished the rest of the quilting
in just a few days.

(this color is soo wrong 😑 )

Because I quilted the remaining background so fast
I had lots of hand quilting to catch up on...


Then I made and attached the binding over the course of a few days,
and sewed it down with big stitches.


I finished the quilt on Tuesday, Nov 19th,
took a quick celebratory photo,
 and tossed it in the wash.


To my absolute horror,
it came out with pink splotches 
where there shouldn't have been any pink.

After many soaks and washings
it was restored to its proper glory on Friday.


Whew!


And now 
almost exactly one year after I started it,
Terry's Jeweled Butterfly
is finally ready
to go home.
💗

and start saving for the next one 😁.


(You can find progress pictures
with  associated stories, whines, celebrations
and thought processes


Terry ~ this quilt is filled with love and hope and prayers
and fond memories.
Thanks for hiring me to make it for you 
and helping me save lives.

I love you!!


Thursday, November 7, 2019

becoming a longarmer


Picking up where we left off yesterday...
(this lying around all day is good for something, I suppose)


While deeply grateful for the opportunity to practice and learn
on other people's tops,
I was starting to feel 
that if I continued this much longer,
I was going to be getting the short end of the stick.

I totally recognize I could not have gotten to where I am
as a quilter
without these ladies allowing me to quilt 
less than amazing quilting
on their carefully pieced tops.

but because of that
I was actually starting to get
- dare I say -
good.


I didn't feel like I could just go on 
indefinitely
quilting for free,
no matter how badly I wanted
 to be able to continue to practice regularly.



There are only so many hours a week 
I can dedicate to this hobby/ministry.
and while I was loving the improvement to my quilting,
I wasn't doing anything to help improve lives for my RR ladies.
(Not that I always have to be - but it is always on my radar)


I started thinking about maybe quilting for pay,
but at a reduced beginner rate.
It'd be a win for me,
because I'd still be getting practice,
but I'd also be able to earn some money
for more machines for Rahab's rope,
and it'd be a win for clients,
because they'd be getting decent quilting
- with a little more character 
than computer generated edge to edge 
or pantograph quilting -
for less $$
(and that money would be going to a good cause!)


I also had been thinking
that
as much as I love Lucy
and am so grateful and thrilled to have this old longarm,
I'd really like to be able to do ruler work.
(translated - I'd like a different longarm someday
in the not too distant future)

It's something that I'd been looking forward to
 about owning a longarm machine.
I didn't realize
that without a stitch regulator,
ruler work would be difficult (at best)
and when you add a very heavy machine to the equation,
it's next to impossible.

So I wondered -
would it be okay if I saved some of that money
for myself
??


God is always so good to us.
Every big decision we've had,
where we might be inclined to not see exactly eye to eye,
He has brought us -separately- to complete agreement.
Where one of us starts the conversation
(with perhaps a bit of trepidation)
and the other one says,
"Yes! That's exactly what I was thinking too."

The end of July,
Tyler told me he'd been thinking.

He thought that I should think about 
quilting for pay.
And that I shouldn't donate all of the money,
but keep some of my earnings
to save for another longarm.

a horribly pieced and badly cared for vintage quilt top I purchased off Etsy.
Quilting this showed me that I just might actually have a gift!
I'll share more about this one when it reaches the top of the to-be-bound stack ;-)

But.
I didn't want to just throw myself out there.
(I don't want to spend my precious sewing time
quilting ugly tops.
Just being honest here.)
So I was thinking and pondering and praying 
about how to proceed.

the quilting on the colored portion and the right side background fabric was done on my domestic.
I finally got good enough, and brave enough (and tired enough of this quilt needing to be finished...)
to figure out how to put the partially quilted thing on the longarm.
The top portion was done by Lucy.

Three days after Tyler and I had that conversation,
I got a message from Mary.

She wanted to discuss
 hiring me to quilt for her.
💗