Design Wall Monday 9-8-2014

Busy times in the studio. 

First Design Wall Monday stuff:

I'm showing off the switch over of Ruthie the hand guided long arm to Ruthie the computer driven long arm. 

First she was taken off the carriage and new electronics were added. (Ok, I admit I am not technically savvy on electronics so I might have described this wrong!) 

Then Ruthie was put back on the rails with a WHOLE lot of wires going to all sorts of different places. There is a new computer sitting near the handles. 

Then I had to figure out how to use that computer and to get it to tell Ruthie where and what to sew. Eventually I was able to fill up a yard of fabric with practice runs. 

Finally I figured out how to quilt an entire quilt.  Ok, so it was only 36 by 42" but it was quilted by Ruthie. I actually took this picture while it was stitching away on these hearts.  You can see the heart pattern on the screen.  Unfortunately I ran out of thread with about 3" left to quilt.  And rats!  I could not figure out how to convince it to sew those last 3".  Sigh.  Luckily it is a charity quilt and most people won't even notice those few missing hearts. 

I am going to postpone my goal results until later this week because I agreed to post for the "Around the World Blog Hop."  This has been going on for some time and it finally came around to me.  Alycia, of the Colorado QOV fame, asked me to participate in this blog hop.  Thanks Alycia.  Go check out her blog at Alycia Quilts. Her Around the World Blog Hop post was Monday, 9/1.  Scroll back and you can spend some time looking at her post and then link to a couple of posts from the gal who asked her to participate.  

There were several questions that were offered to get me started.  I'm going to answer only one or two of them or you might be stuck here forever! 

First off was the wonderful question of what am I working on.  My goal this year is to finish some UFOs.  I thought I had been pretty good about working on older stuff this year and not starting new stuff.  Um, no, not really. I've completed 4 quilts from my UFO collection.  (Two were big enough to send to Alycia for QOV.  She shared them on her blog here. You need to scroll down nearly to the bottom to see them.) Seven quilts were started this year -- almost all of them smaller charity quilts. One larger quilt was started about a year ago so I didn't count it as a UFO.  

In the UFO finishing pipeline are at least 4 more quilts that need borders and quilting and 4 quilts that have been waiting for Ruthie's computerization.  I'll be working on those soon.  

The other question that got me doing some heavy thinking was how does my creating process work.  S L O W L Y!  I am not a fast quilter or piecer.  I tend to work on at least 2 and sometimes 3 projects at a time.  I've found that I can prep steps from two or three different projects and then chain sew them.  I try to always have an ender project going also.  

I am a pinner -- everything gets pinned but often it is more a reminder of which seam to sew.  And, I'm a presser.  My ironing board is across the studio from the machine because I want to get up and move around.  And I like a crisp seam.  

Cutting out a quilt and binding are my least favorite things to do.  I seldom cut an entire quilt out before I start sewing pieces together.  I do try to make a sample block before I cut everything.  The few times I've cut a whole quilt out I've enjoyed how quickly the sewing goes. It really works well if using limited fabrics but most of my quilts are scrappy -- thus it takes forever to cut and I'd just as soon start in on the piecing part! If I'm really good the binding gets cut out before the quilt is quilted but after piecing.  I've started doing both sides of the binding by machine instead of hand stitching one side. 

In the future I'm hoping I can try some projects that are more challenging.  If I can clear out several of my project bins I just might start on a New York Beauty table runner.  I figure that will be quite the challenge for me! 

Part of the "Around the World Blog Hop" is to invite other quilters to continue the journey.  Unfortunately I was only able to get one to agree but you are in for a real treat if you haven't visited Chris's Quilting Universe.  She does some amazing artistic quilts. She's been taking classes so she is blogging a lot about the design process of her pieces.  I've been following her work for years and it's been wonderful to see her growth.  Plan to visit her on Sept 15th during her posting for the blog hop.

I'm linking up with Patchwork Time's Design Wall Monday.  Hope you will get over there to see what folks are up to this week.  

Happy Quilting All!