Journal: Quilting, Quilting

Last Tuesday, Victoria texted me to say that she and Kurt have made an offer on a house, and are now waiting and hoping it goes through.

I looked up the address... clicked Google Street View – and found this, right across the street:

“Perpetual garage and yard sale right handy-like, just across the street!” I wrote to Victoria, sending her the screenshot.  😄

As I type, I’m drinking coffee that’s a mix of the last of the White Chocolate Candy Cane and the new bag of Strawberry Cheesecake – and I think Christopher Bean should definitely make some beans in this combination.  Mmmmm, mmmm, it’s good.

There goes the timer... gotta check on the rising bread... 

I quilted on my customer’s Multi-Colored Pinwheels quilt for a few hours that day, then, some time after midnight, I rolled the quilt forward, positioned the needle at the start of row #4, and then shut everything down for the night, as my back was expressing its displeasure at my idea of proceeding on.  Just one more row, just one more row, I coaxed; but my back protested, No, no!  Turn out the lights!  Turn out the lights!

So I turned out the lights and headed for my recliner.  It wasn’t long before I was seated, heating pad tucked behind my back, editing pictures of the quilt.  I then sent pictures to my customer, and posted some on my quilting blog.  Maybe I should quit doing that, so I quit getting so many requests for quilting! 

Years ago, we had a friend who started a small business in our town.  It had the potential to grow, because he sold a good and needed product, and knew how to service the product, too.  Friends recommended that he advertise in a local weekly flyer – but he responded, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that, because then I’ll get too much business!”  haha

(No, he never did get ‘too much business’.)  (But he did get in more fishing time.)

The pantograph rows are 11” high, and the panto, called ‘Fall Flurry’, by Bethanne Nemesh, is somewhat intense, so each row takes 20 minutes.  The pantograph is one of my favorites.  If Bethanne ever designed or created anything I don’t like, I haven’t seen it yet!

I used ‘natural white’ 60-weight Bottom Line thread in the bobbin and white 50-weight So Fine thread on top.  The batting was Hobbs Heirloom cotton.

The quilt was 112” long, so, figuring in the overlap in the panto, there would probably be a total of 12 rows.  That meant there were about nine rows to go.  Each row took 20 minutes.  I spent maybe 5 minutes rolling the quilt forward and getting it all lined up.  Let’s just make it easy, and say 30 minutes per row, as that would take care of bobbin refills, coffee mug refills, etc.  So... I had 4 ½ hours of quilting to go.  But sometimes I’m overoptimistic. 

Wednesday, Victoria sent a picture of a small stuffed giraffe, a little brown/beige herringbone French beret cap, and a wee dusty-green onesie with ‘baby BROTHER’ printed on the front.  

She also sent four short ultrasound videos.  That teeny, tiny baby is busy!

I wrote back, “Wow, he looks like a little Brinkman baby already.”

“The technician thought he looks like Kurt already!” Victoria answered.  “Bill (her father-in-law) said he thought one of the videos looked like Daddy.”  (That would be Larry.)

“Well, tell him I said now we’re all getting pretty carried away,” I responded. 

(Yes, Bill is a good friend, and yes, he’ll know I’m kidding.  I think.)

“Haha!” Victoria replied.  “Both families see the other family.”

“Stands to reason,” I answered.  “Your little girls are a charming mix of both.”

Larry doesn’t have a very good sense of smell.  It has been irreparably harmed by working first with cement dust and then with car paint for many years; and contracting Covid-19 last year was just about the last straw.  He can’t smell the litterbox (so he says; but one should always be suspicious of that claim), mold, or mildew.

When I complain of bad smells, he either ‘doesn’t hear’ me, or he takes a giant ‘snuffing’ of the air, so that if the physics laws of air compression, volume, and pounds of pressure per square inch were really in play in my house, the walls would collapse. 

Having smelt nothing after this lung-expanding exercise, he looks at me blankly.

So Wednesday I had the diffuser quietly misting the soft, lovely fragrance of lily-of-the-valley, an essential oil from Rainbow Abby.  We walked in after church, and I thought, Finally!  The house smells really nice!  It wasn’t strong or pungent, not at all overpowering; just a fresh and fragrant aroma that was quite lovely.

Less than a minute after this thought went through my head, Larry said, “You’re right; this house really does stink.  Like wet diapers or wet dog or something.”

Can I be blamed if I wanted to box his ears?  But maybe boxing his nose would be more appropriate.

Instead, I did what I do next best:  I ranted and raved.

And he laughed.  He laughed!

We had a late supper, and then I went back to my quilting studio.  I finished the Multi-Colored Pinwheels quilt at 2:30 a.m.  The quilt measures 64” x 112”.

One down, five more to go!  Five more for this lady, anyway.

After posting pictures of the quilts we saw at the State Fair, someone on Facebook commented under my post, “I need to buy some quilts, but you did not list the prices!”  Mind you, I captioned my post quite clearly, and many of the pictures included tags with names, and ribbons people had won.  🙄  Some people.

Comments under the comics are often the funniest part of the comics.  One of Thursday’s comics showed Mr. Drabble in a fast-food restaurant, where Mr. Drabble is oft wont to be.

In the comment section, discussing restaurants, closings, and trouble finding good people to hire, someone wrote, “Yesterday at the McDonald’s drive-thru, the worker couldn’t tell if the next drink was my Diet Coke, so she took the lid off, put her nose down to it and sniffed.”

Next comment:  “I went to a local Dunkin’ (pre-pandemic) and asked for black coffee with an artificial sweetener.  The clerk picked up a packet, ripped it open with her teeth, and poured it in.  She seemed shocked when I said, ‘Is it too late to change to just black?’”

That afternoon, I took Loren some food, then shipped off my customer’s quilt.

By 8:30 p.m., two-and-a-half rows were done on the Two-Color Mystery quilt in lilac and teal batiks.  The thread I used on the back was 40-weight Rainbows thread by Superior.  I used that stuff on a friend’s quilt a few years ago when I still had the HQ16, and the thread broke time and again.  I loosened the tension... slowed my speed... changed needle size... still the thread broke.

I later gave that thread a try on my newer Avanté, with the very same results.  When I complained on an online quilting group, a number of people informed me that they love Rainbows thread and use it without the slightest problem.

Well, hummmph.  As Mr. Darlin’ said to Barney Fife in his growly voice, “More power to ya.”

The thing was, the Rainbows thread matched the lilac batik perfectly.  I wasn’t about to use it on top, though.

Instead, despite the fact that it’s a 40-weight thread, I put it in the bobbin, since the back of the quilt was lilac batik, too.  I put 60-weight Bottom Line in a darker shade of lilac on the top.  That’s backwards from what I usually do, but I liked how it looked, top and bottom.  I readjusted top and bobbin tensions, and quilted away.  Neither thread broke once.

The pantograph is called ‘Lightning’, by Hermione Agee.

At a quarter after two in the morning, I was finished.

Friday afternoon, the batting for a quilt from the lady in Phoenix arrived – and whataya know, it was Quilters’ Dream Puff.  I love Dream Puff.  It’s so... puffy!  And soft.  And puffy!  It’s really nice stuff.  Puffy!

I once used it immediately after using Mountain Mist’s Great Glory III, a high-loft poly. 

Well, Great Glory III worked, sorta.  But you can stick a finger through that stuff just trying to pick it up.  And I’m pretty sure if you sneezed on it, the whole works would turn into breeze-lofted confetti.

Then I used Quilters’ Dream Puff.  Ahhhhh...

I wrote to let my customer know her batting had arrived, and how pleased I was with it.

“What you have taught me,” she replied, “is to go with Quilters’ Dream and then just pick one. 😊”

Here’s one of the things I like about the company:

They had a problem with their wool batting ten to twelve years ago.  I’m not sure what the problem was, but the batting wasn’t soft like it should’ve been, and didn’t hold together like it usually did.  Customers started complaining about it.  The company found the problem(s) – a supplier had sold them inferior wool, and also some of their machines weren’t finishing the stuff properly.

They fixed the problem, and sent new batting to all the customers who had purchased the bad stuff, whether they had complained or not.

Unfortunately, they lost customers over the ordeal, because people were telling other quilters, “Never buy Quilters’ Dream wool!  It’s horrible!”  I wish people would research matters before they do that – and I wish they would then spread the good news as quickly as they spread the bad! 

There are dozens and dozens of kinds of batting, a lot of it made by companies most of us have never even heard of.  I’ve tried numerous kinds made by various companies, and I’ve never found any that can hold a candle to Quilters’ Dream, no matter whether it’s poly, wool, or cotton.  I have not tried their silk.  Hobbs’ Tuscany collection is quite nice, a higher quality batting than their Heirloom collection.

But sometimes I buy a) what’s available in town, if I’m in a hurry, or b) what I can afford.  In days gone by, I wouldn’t have even considered these more expensive battings.  It was more important that the children had milk, bread, and shoes!  😃

Shortly after the batting came, the FedEx man showed up with four very large Styrofoam containers of frozen foods from Schwan’s.  Whew, I wore myself to a frizzle-frazzle putting it all away.  Did I think I was in a timed marathon, or what?!  Some of the food had to go to the downstairs freezer; that entailed numerous treks down and back up the stairs.  I hauled the dry ice out to the back deck to steam itself into oblivion, and put the two salvageable Styrofoam containers into the Jeep after laying the seats down to make room for them; they’ll go to the Salvation Army.  The other two containers were evidently pressed into service as jacks for the FedEx truck whilst they changed a flat; those are in the garage awaiting trash day.

By 2:45 p.m., an apple pie was in the oven.  I had fifteen minutes to load a quilt onto the frame before time to call Loren, after which I would make him some supper.  At least I have plenty of food to choose from now.  😋

That day, I worked on my customer’s ‘Silent Night’ quilt.  

There’s variegated 40-weight King Tut thread on top in ‘Sheaves’ color, and 60-weight Bottom Line thread in the bobbin in ‘tan’.  The tan thread looks gold on the backing, which is dark green with a gold metallic print.  The batting is Hobbs Heirloom cotton.  The pantograph is called ‘Christmas Tree Doodle’.

By midnight, it was all done, and the next one, ‘A Perfect Union’, was loaded on the frame and ready for me to start quilting the next day.  ‘A Perfect Union’ is a pattern by Edyta Sitar.  I like most all of her patterns, and really love her pretty fabric lines.

By 7:30 p.m. Saturday, the ‘Perfect Union’ quilt was done.  There is 40-weight Signature thread in ‘Sand Dollar’ color on top, and 50-weight So Fine thread in ‘Pastel Blue’ in the bobbin.  The pantograph is ‘Becker’s Shooting Star’.  The quilt measures 55 ½” x 70”.

I took pictures... edited them... posted them online... sent them to my customer... retired to my recliner for the night... and took another look at the pictures, because I really like this quilt, both pattern and fabrics, and thought I might like to make it someday. 

Then and only then did I notice that a few of the blocks are turned wrong.

Bother!  This is such a lovely quilt.  I would’ve told my customer and asked what she wanted me to do about it, had I seen it before I quilted it.  A photo can often show you what the eye does not spot.   This has happened twice in the last few weeks with customers’ quilts.  I guess I should spread them out, take pictures, and take a good hard look at the shots before I put the quilts on the frame.  When they’re on the frame, I’m only seeing an 18” width at a time – and if I’m using a pantograph, which is most often the case, I’m standing at the back of the machine watching the laser light following the lines on the panto, as opposed to standing in front of the machine looking at the quilt as I work, as I do with a custom job.  Here’s a picture of the quilt, from the pattern itself:

I told the lady about it, apologizing for not noticing in time to fix it.  She seemed untroubled, reassuring me, “We will just call them my ‘humility blocks’.  No big deal.”

Now, there’s the kind of a customer one would always wish to have!  😁

Larry was very late getting home that night.  He’d gone to pick up a big backhoe in Sioux Falls for his friend Joe, the man whose vehicles he often works on in Genoa.

As usual, he had a tire blow out on his trailer.  Problem:  he didn’t have the wrench that fit the lug nuts; he’d forgotten his wrenches in Genoa.  So, after a few unsuccessful attempts to remove them with a vice grip, during which he rounded the edges of the nuts, he unhitched his pickup, drove it to a nearby Walmart, got the wrench he needed, drove back to the trailer, and changed the tire.  Of course, it wasn’t as easy as all that, what with those rounded lug nuts.

He got home in the early morning hours, and slept fast before the alarm went off.

After church last night, we chatted with Caleb and Maria and played with Baby Eva for a bit.  We got some things at the grocery store, then went to Kurt and Victoria’s house, as they had invited us over for pumpkin chiffon pie.  Victoria had made it with the recipe I’ve used for many years:  Pumpkin Chiffon Pie

Today I crammed the three finished quilts into a box, and took them to the post office after taking Loren some food.

That’s almost harder than quilting, cramming quilts into a box they don’t really fit into!  The smaller the box, the less the shipping.  A big, lightweight box will often cost more to ship than a small, heavy box.  Thus, the cramming.  And taping.  Lots of packaging tape.  We don’t want that box exploding, midflight.

The moon is full tonight, big and bright.

Once upon a time when Lydia was about four years old, we were trying out our new binoculars, which had a nighttime feature of some sort, on the new moon that had just risen.  The older children were taking turns looking through them... then I took them, got them focused a little better, and folded them together a bit to make them small enough for Lydia.  She’d tried those binoculars earlier in the day, but could never get them quite right so as to see anything.

I put them into her small hands, and she held them very carefully and tightly.  “Now, here’s what you do,” I told her.  “You look at the moon; then, still looking at it, lift the binoculars up to your eyes and just keep right on looking.”

Lydia did as instructed.

Then she stood bolt still and silent, barely breathing, and I knew she was really seeing that big ol’ yellow moon.

Then, still not moving an iota, she breathed in amazement, “It’s a ball!  I thought it was just a circle.”  😍

Time to load the next quilt!

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn           ,,,>^..^<,,,