Bernette | Thousand Needles

I got a new machine. I picked it up from the shop last Thursday and here it is sitting around waiting for me to have the time to unpack it. You may wonder why I didn’t rip into those boxes and start playing with this lovely thing inside…

But we’ve been busy with kid stuff and an outing scheduled for today. Back to school night was last Thursday for my son and last night we had the 1st football home game at the girl’s school. The hubby wants to head out today and enjoy a day trip in Temecula. Thank goodness it’s a 3 day weekend because I’m claiming tomorrow and Monday as me-days! I do want to finish quilting Hampton Ridge as I only have to finish 1 side of the main border and then do all 4 sides of the last pieced border. It’s already set up on my now old machine.

I did trade in 3 machines to get this one. I said goodbye to:

Bailey Mid Arm
2/7/15

It served its purpose this past year and a half. I bought this machine early in 2015 used from a fellow blogger in Orange County for a great deal. And I learned a lot. I enjoyed having my own machine to quilt with and take my time quilting a piece. I know that if I ever got a long arm (which I’ve gone back and forth on over the last year) I would totally use it. Thank you Bailey! In the meantime, while I decide whether I want to get a new long arm or not, I plan to rent time on the long arms in my area. For Hampton Ridge, I rented the Bernina long arm and IT WAS WONDERFUL. At least compared to the Bailey. I hope to do some research and see if there are other rentals available so I can do a good comparison.

Brother Innov-is NQ3500D

This didn’t serve it’s purpose. This was the machine I bought because I wanted an embroidery machine and ended up spending way too much money on this. I didn’t use it fully and I tried but it just took up space. I brought it out occasionally to embroider things here and there. I’m a Bernina girl and every time I looked at this machine I remembered that I bought this because I couldn’t afford the Bernina at that time. In retrospect, I should have just waited. Thank goodness for being able to trade in our mistakes! To be fair, there is nothing wrong with this machine. It’s me not you! 🙂

Kayla’s Bernette

And finally, Kayla’s bernette is now gone. I’m most sad and tormented about trading in this little machine. It was her first and it’s so cute. She is upgrading to my Bernina 330 so she is not sad about this trade at all.

~happy quilting friends!

~Melanie

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…

WIPs Be Gone 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! 🙂

Flowers and Baskets – Basically the bulk of the quilting is done on this project. All I need to do is the gold parts and the purple borders. Then I can bind it and be done with it. When I started quilting this thing last year, I first quilted the cross lines to stabilize the quilt. Then I quilted the flowers and basket blocks. I wanted these blocks to pop and not flatten them out so I quilted them using the “stitch in the ditch” method. First I used my walking foot, but I had to twist the quilt and it was difficult to maneuver so I started Free Motion Quilting it. It’s really hard but it doesn’t have to be perfect. The next blocks I quilted are the 4 black blocks. I basically did a simple big loopy meander. I didn’t want to go to fancy because then it would never get done. Next is the gold and purple parts. Luckily I have the right color threads to do those. 🙂

Happy Quilting everyone!

Melanie

Thousand Needles

Quilting, Scrapbooking, Gardening and whatever else catches my fancy

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