lovin' Lucy

I just can't even express how much 

I am loving

having a longarm.

Sometimes I'll be in the middle of quilting

and just feel 

This!

This is what I was made for.

In the first few days after buying Lucy,

I had several moments of 

"What have we done?!"

and

"I just wasted almost $2000!"

but then Tyler replaced the wheels

(which we sort of expected he'd need to do)

and I bought a Towa gauge

and got in a little more practice

and

I started having so.much.fun.

I quickly figured out 

that I would better retain my improvements

if I could quilt fairly regularly.

But I couldn't quite figure out how to 

piece lots of quilt tops

in order to practice quilting

at least once every week to ten days.

Then, some Instagram friends

lovingly and generously sent me some of their tops

to practice on,

and assured me that they would cherish any imperfections

(of which I had assured them 

there would be plenty!)

I will always be so grateful for those women.

Their faith in me,

and their graciousness towards me

allowed me to increase my skills

so much more rapidly

than if I were 'going it alone'.

When I didn't have anything to quilt 

and it'd been a week or so,

I'd throw a yard of fabric on the frame

and just play.

(I've amassed quite a stack of quilts to be bound)

My quilting went from

passable

to decent

to actually kinda good.

And Lucy and I were loving every bit of the learning.

Well. I was anyways,

and I can only assume from Luc's wonderful compliance

that she's lovin it too.

I still love piecing quilt tops,

but man,

I'm loving quilting them more than I ever expected.