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.

💗

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. 

life in the fast lane (not)

What I didn't tell you in my last post

was

shortly after I took that picture,

I went in the old house

 through what had been the doorway to the LEM

(and before that - the kitchen window)

and then exited

with my arms full.

I misjudged quite how deep of a step down it was

and with no hands available to grab onto the opening

 to help ease my way down,

I ended up sort of falling out of the house,

landed hard on my foot (on unlevel ground)

and tore my dadgum meniscus in my right knee.

You might remember

 I had a slight tear in my meniscus several years ago

and only went to the doctor 

when I had to

use my hands to move my leg

to move my foot from the gas pedal to the brake

while driving.

Or that I went months after injuring my achilles

before going to the doctor.

I didn't even wait 24 hours before going this time.

know what this means??

This means
that the LEM will soon be moved over
and attached to the new house.
Wooohooo!!

halloween octopalooza

Lily and Lexi made and hung these decorations in the middle of the night Wednesday
so we'd wake up to them on Halloween.
There were also little ghosties in our coffee cups. Sweet, sweet girls 💗

Jeremiah, Josiah, and Lily dressed up for Octopalooza

at church on Sunday.

Jeremiah went as The Invisible Man

Josiah was Flat Stanley

interestingly, the invisible man cast a very visible shadow ;-)

and Lily (who made her entire costume herself!) 

dressed up as Maleficent.

(Daddy surprised her and Lexi 

and took them to see the first showing

of the movie on the night it was released 💗)

She made the horns by shaping tinfoil, then adding paper mache'
Taylee sweetly came over and did Lil's makeup

the cape she made from a fitted sheet, and the skirt from a matching pillowcase

 Here she is with Jeremiah

heehee

For the Fall Festival, 

Lexi was a Pop Star

(we'd ordered rainbow-striped over-the-knee socks

that matched her ukulele case candy bag,

but they still haven't arrived😠

She made the earrings after Dad freaked out about her first choice of large hoop earrings.
Then she decided that they were way better than the hoops :-)

 

the jacket was a 50% thrift shop find, and we added some clearance (and a few not on clearance) sparkly patches

Lily was (obviously) a scarecrow,

Lily made this costume by herself, too
except for the 5 hr cornrows straw hair - that was my contribution ;-)

Josiah was a tourist from the nineties

and Jeremiah was

-well-

I'm not entirely sure 😂

Tyler dressed as he's dressed for Halloween

for the past several years,

a farmer.

I do love that man!!              

Brandon and Taylee

were Flynn Rider and Rapunzel

I made his vest out of a $4 long-sleeved turtleneck shirt
and buckles that he made with a 3D printer,
and his bag from a $2 and 50 cent vinyl remnant from JoAnns

The annual buy back the candy Halloween Candy Sale

is already set up

and we've made plans to go to Scott and Jackie's next year.

XO