Road Trip Recovery

 

We made it back from Shipshewana!!

Everyone in the group had a really good time and they are already planning a longer trip next time. There is just no way to fit everything into one day. It was another marathon 36 hour road trip with lots of shopping - fabric (from Lolly's Fabrics) and horse stuff and model horses and baked goods and some more fabric (from A Little Bit of Lolly's)and spices and seasonings and clothes - OH MY!!!  With all the shopping, I forgot to take pictures of the adventure - My Bad!

 

One of the highlights was a ride on the1906 Dentzel Carousel on the third floor of the  Davis Mercantile

 

My friend Pam was on this trip as a co-trip director and all I got was this tee shirt ;)

 

 

ARC Update - All 50 Arcs are *finally* appliqued to the background!!  Only 29 green junction pieces to go before I layer and quilt. So I need to start thinking about how on earth I going to quilt this one. 

 

And it's time to start planning this week's road trip - Iowa looms ahead.

 





Happy Labor Day! Time for a break..

A Service Break 

 

Last Friday I bite the bullet and took my sewing machine in for an overdue servicing.  While it hasn't been as long as the rotary cutter debacle (DUH Moment of August 23rd), I had been seeing an issue with tension.  On an auto tension machine, that's an issue.  Most likely, it's a 'get the machine cleaned & serviced, you idiot' issue that will be resolved fairly quickly.  I hope so, cause I get twitchy without it.  'It' is Singer 6510 Scholastic machine that has been driven miles & miles over the last 12 years.  It has sewn quilts of many kinds and sizes, curtains, Renaissance Faire garb, dog beds, leather bits, etc.

It has also regularly traveled to Wisconsin, Indiana & Michigan.  Recently, I headed to Michigan to do some yard work for my folks, scheduled to be gone for about 2 days, and when I told my DH I wasn't taking my machine, he looked at me like I had grown another head on my shoulder.  I took the machine with me on that trip. 

Unfortunately, the service techs are on holiday for a week so it will be two weeks at least before I get my machine back.  Breathing deeply... So what's a quilter to do without her workhorse machine???

 

Go Fabric Shopping, of course!!

 

A Shopping Break

I headed over to Shipshewana, Indiana to my most-favorite-quilt-shop-in-the-whole-world, Lolly's Fabrics.  It is an AMAZING place, with over 13,000 bolts of quilt fabric - batiks, moderns, civil war repro, 30's & 40's prints, flannels, solids, blenders, florals, Orientals, holiday, wide backs, conversation novelties, baby & kid prints, books, patterns, kits, notions and more!  This is a picture of the side door and porch, complete with rocking chairs so folks can sit and rest from all the fabric and other shopping.

 

Lolly's is located inside the Davis Mercantile.

 

 

Here's just a few of the things I picked up.

 

 

An Experiment Break

 

While the workhorse is in the shop, the Featherweight gets to come out & play.  Featherweights are incredible for piecework but I'm going to push the envelope and practice some free motion quilting on it.  Yes, it can be done and while I've tried it at a quilt show, I've never done it at home. Time to try something new.  I'll keep you posted on my experiment.