Thread Tales From A Scrappy Quilter

It is exciting to finally see this little lap quilt come full circle.  It is now quilted, bound, washed and dried.  You can see the beginnings of this project posted on my blog back in November 2009 .  The top was completed in Hawaii, I even cut the binding in Hawaii.    I just needed the quilting space, a backing fabric and a quilting plan.   I've had so many issues with my quilt frame mixed in with our frequent travel, holidays and company.  But happy to report that it did get finished within the 1 year mark of returning to the mainland (this week last year - woohoo!).  The 4 patches themselves measure 4" square and are cut from repeats in the same section of fabric so that you get a new design within each block.  I decided it would be fun to do something different in each block and quilted many of these designs from "Free-Motion Quilting Made Easy" 186 designs from 8 simple shapes by Eva A. Larkin.   I thought this would be a piece of cake to fill my 56 blocks fro

In 2007, at the age of 10 years old, our big boy "Tigger Bigger Boo" was diagnosed with diabetes.   This was not the first crossroad with illness or injury we had faced with Tigger.  We had been through several scares with him.  Tigg had a very special personality and relationship with me.  I was going to do whatever I needed to see him through this.  We could write a book on our emotional journey and details of trying to manage feline diabetes with food regulation, 12 hour insulin injections, 12 hour glucose curves with ear pricks every 2 hours to get samples along with oodles of logs, schedules and journals.   But through it all, my boy presented me with the greatest gift of all, his love and the sweet gentleness that only he has possessed of all my kitty babies.  We lost our sweet, brave boy on Friday, May 13, 2011; the day before "dad" was to leave for an overseas mission.   He will be cherished in our hearts forever.   Thank you all for your words of comfort an

THIRD carriage arrived today.   #2 carriage was swaybacked and no matter what we did, you could not level the frame because the problem was in the CARRIAGE.   With the machine near the back of the frame, it would roll forward and stop in the middle sometimes swinging back and forth, yet if you rolled the machine to the front and took your hands off, it also rolled to the middle....   Quilted like you were plowing an unturned field.  Imagine my dismay when we set up the 3rd carriage today and she loudly "clicked" all across the tracks...   Good grief, this one had a bad bearing on one of the wheels.   Thankfully, hubby determined which one it was and replaced it from carriage #2.  Customer support said "but I checked it myself"...  but if you don't have the weight of the machine on it, you might not notice a problem and it certainly did not "click" when rolled.   After swapping out one of the wheels, no clicking and the frame was level!  Now, I must get