Kayla’s Bernette
01/17/2015

Yesterday, I was supposed to take my Bernina in for servicing.  I only had 1 thing I wanted to get done at work and I was waiting on one of my clients to provide me with the finalized version of 1 sheet before the rest of it could go out.  The time frame, in my head, was that if I didn’t get a response by 10:30am then I was free to go.  I had an appointment at 11am at a prospective High School for my upcoming HS student and figured to bring the Bernina in after that.  But at 10:45am, I received an email from one of my staff members with the finalized version.  Apparently he had been on the phone with the client for 45 minutes finalizing the version while I was thinking I was home free! 🙁  So instead of dropping the Bernina off, I dropped off Kayla’s application at another HS and went to work to get the reports out to clients before the 3 day weekend.  And that left me with no time to bring the Bernina in for servicing.  But I had gotten it ready and had already taken out Kayla’s Bernette to use in the meantime.  It’s so cute!  But I’ll have to move the machines around again since I can use my machine now. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been doing…

WIP Status:

 1. Scrapitude – Working on Clue #1.  I’ve got these done:

Scrapitude
Clue #1 – partial
01/17/2015

But I’ve still got to press these:

Scrapitude
Clue #1 – partial
01/17/2015

Then I can work on the final part of the clue, which is finishing the second half of that triangle.  I’m enjoying these.  All the pieces were cut beforehand so all I need to do is sit down and sew.  And when I only have a few minutes to do anything, I can go ahead and sew up items between other things.  Since we have a month to get all these done, I can sit back, do a bit at a time and enjoy the process rather than rush through everything.

Something I noticed is the importance of starching.  When I first learned to quilt, I got the impression that starching was bad.  I can’t remember now if that was implied or said and who implied or said it but I stayed away from it.  As I took more classes and quilted more, starching became more prevalent but I didn’t use it every time… Just when I felt I needed it.  There was no science about it and there were plenty of times when I should have used it but didn’t.  Anyway, I was listening to a quilty podcast – I can’t remember now which one – (SORRY!) but they were talking about starching your fabric before you cut to keep it from shifting.  I never did that before and I thought that was a great idea!  I would have loved to do that while I was cutting for scrapitude because some of those pieces were so small, but it’s too late to do that now.  However, as I press the pieces (after piecing them together, of course) I’m using starch to help it keep its shape when I piece for the next step.  It’s been keeping my pieces together with very little (practically none) shifting going on.  I have to say that that’s my big aha moment this week and can I get a Whoop Whoop! 🙂