We’ve moved. Moving is hard. I absolutely dislike it and will not willingly choose to move if I could help it. It’s even worse moving into my Mother’s house and I have absolutely no place to put my stuff.  It’s been a week and my husband and I are crammed into a little den. Literally there is a 2×4 walking space. All other space is taken by the couch, the twin bed, and all of our clothes in suitcases and hampers. The kids’ stuff is in the room with us but they’re sleeping in my nephew’s room since he has a full sized bunk bed. It’s only going to be like this for another week. Next week my sister and her family are moving out and we can move into her space. In the meantime, no boxes have been fully unpacked. So I’m practicing patience since I know she’ll move out next weekend and then I can start to figure out how I’m going to arrange my stuff.

I have my “office” laid out in the living room and I have a great view of the front yard.

This is one great thing about having my own business. I do miss my desk, though, because right now I’m on a folding table with no drawers. So while I work all my stuff is under the table or around me on whatever surface I can easily reach. Another great thing is that the hubby sits next to me while he plays WOW and we can enjoy each other’s company while doing our own thing. You can’t really see it but to the left of my chair is my mom’s treadmill! It gets really loud when she’s on that thing!

And finally… the very first thing I did when we arrived (after sleeping and resting) was reunite with my Bernina. I unpacked it, cleaned it, set up another folding table, took the quilting bins that I felt I needed out and placed them under and around my table. I didn’t actually do any quilting. I just arranged everything. In terms of quilting this week, I’m happy to say that I finished putting the label on my son’s quilt. It’s not fancy or anything – but it’s done!

Next I’m working on the hand quilting on my first quilt. I’m on track to getting one block done this month. It’s SO slow! And I cannot just do that! So in addition I’m trying to also get comfortable enough to machine quilt my daughter’s thirties quilt. I am watching the Craftsy class, Machine Quilting, with Wendy Butler Berns, and it has been very helpful. What I noticed was that the foot I bought to quilt with (not the walking foot) didn’t look the same as Wendy’s. So I did some research online and found that I’m supposed to be using the #9 Darning Foot. I’m not sure why the place I purchased my machine gave me the #20 embroidery foot. I think (and I’m guessing) that they didn’t have the darning foot in stock so since I had no idea which foot I needed and was trusting them to give me what I needed they just gave me what they had. I could probably play around and use that foot (I have no idea) but it really made me mad Wednesday night when I wanted to put it on my machine and play with quilting. It’s been about a year and I’m now 400 miles away from that shop so it’s not like I can just go in and return it. 🙁 Anyway I believe that bad things happen for a reason and something good always reveals themselves at some point. Because of this foot issue, I went to Bernina’s website to locate a store close by. I found Eddie’s Quilting Bee in Sunnyvale which is about 12 miles away from me. My daughter and I went there last Thursday and I was amazed at how big it is, how much fabric they have, and all the sewing machines they showcase. This looks like a shop I can love! I immediately enrolled in a machine quilting class because as much as I like Craftsy – nothing beats a real hands on class. Not to knock the quilting shops in Fremont but – this shop is huge and they have classes! The shops closer to me (and there are 2 I know of not including the box stores) are a lot smaller and do not offer classes. So today I am going through my class supply list, pulling my stuff out to make sure I’ve got everything and then I’ll go back to the shop today or tomorrow to purchase anything I need. I will also see about getting my machine serviced as it has been about a year since I purchased it and the supply list indicated that the sewing machine should be serviced before the class.

Also – I did end up buying the darning foot – a different one as the sales lady suggested I use the darning foot with a clear end to help me see better. I’m not sure it helps and I may end up getting the open darning foot just to see if that works better. I practiced some when I got home Thursday night. I started out thinking I was doing great – at least as great as a newbie could do. But when I turned it over I realized that I had some bobbin issues. Then I took my bobbin out re-threaded it and put it back in. That fixed the bobbin issue.

 – the stitching on the middle and right side is the one with the bobbin issue.  This is the picture of the back side.  The stitching on the bottom left is after I fixed the bobbin issue and is the front side of that practice bit.

And here’s my little sewing area.   As you can see, lighting is a huge problem!  During the day it’s not so bad but I work until about 4pm so it only gives me an hour or so to do any quilting (after eating, resting and socializing with the family).  It helps if I turn the light on in the curio to the right of the table, but I will need more light.  I’ll see how this goes over the next few weeks and hopefully a solution pops up.  Everything is so up in the air that my sewing area may move over time.  So I don’t want to purchase something for now if I may not need it later. 🙂

Happy Saturday!  Happy Quilting!

~Melanie