A pinning exercise on TQ Raffle quilt

This is Toowoomba Quilters Club Inc raffle quilt.  A large one at 87" x 93".  if you pinned it with safety pins every 4" you would use about 505 safety pins.

On a longarm machine you still need to stabilise a quilt if you are quilting one colour on the whole top in finite areas.  I am only quilting the black outer border to begin with.

I am using 6 pins in each block, there are 108 blocks.

I am also pinning 3 of the   66" sashing blocks to keep the whole quilt straight every 3".

Total straight pins in this quilt about 750.  At least the quilt is at my height and I am not bending over to pin.  Plus they are straight pins not safety pins.

2007 APQS Millenium For Sale

I am upgrading my machine so have my original for sale - would cost $21,700 to replace  

selling for $15,700

includes MnM wheels, new leaders.

12foot Aluminium alloy table with clear plexiglass top

On demand Stitch regulator

Ergonomic Handles

Turbo Bobbin Winder

Electronic Horizontal and Vertical Channel Locks

Numerous other extras included

I'd be happy to give a lesson here for the new owner.

Buyer responsible for pick up and delivery.

Leave me a comment if interested

for more details if interested

Unusual House Guests

We had some very unusual house guests stay with us for three days this week.  They were extremely noisy but did a good job.  In the early hours of Tuesday morning we had the hose connecting cold water to the kitchen tap burst. By the time I awoke to what I thought was rain, about 2500litres of tank water was inside the house.  Most of the house has tiled floors but the water found its way into the media room and down the hall into our main bedroom.  My husband and I soaked up as much as we could get before heading back to bed for two hours sleep.

The insurance company sent in the "extraction unit".  A carpet cleaner who left 8 large industrial blowers and one humungous dehumidifier to dry out the carpets, cupboards, skirting boards etc.

It is summer here so the 30+ degrees centigrade temperatures and high humidity saw us eating, TV viewing  I even had my featherweight machine and the ironging board outside on the terrace.

The carpets are now clean, floors dried and cupboards dry.  I think it will take a while for everything inside the drawers and cupboards to return to room temperature.

I can now rehang everything in the wardrobe, for a while there I had a case for shopping for clothes as my husband had more hanging in the robe than I did.

 I purchase some new pattern boards just before Christmas and have just had the perfect quilt to try one of the patterns on.

This is the Ripples pattern which goes really well with the 1930's fabrics on the top of this quilt. Almost centred on some of the embroidered blocks without trying too.

What is even better it was the perfect pattern for the quilt top that the customer wanted to use as the backing.  Log Cabins with fish and dolphins, so it looks a bit like the ocean.

I was very lucky the customer had pieced extra borders to the log cabin quilt so that I could line up the top on it easily, and I had plenty of room on the sides of the quilt to clamp it.

12 Months On

What a difference a year makes, it is 12 months since the devasting floods of January 2011.  Where we had more than 4 feet of water over the road crossing into our estate.

Today they are predicting temperatures of over 38C or 100F for us, we have not had any significant rain for over four weeks.

Where last year we had 6" of water running over the side yard I now have cracks in the ground almost 2" wide.

Ricky Tims is Coming to Australia

Ricky Tims from the USA is coming to Adelaide in Australia, September next year as a guest of the Australian Machine Quilting Festival.

I have some of his DVD's and books so it will be great to see him in person.  A whole day!  Just need to book my accommodation and work on a quilt to enter too.

More details are on the AMQ festival blog.

Macadamias

Our macadamia trees have now been in the garden for three years and have set nuts for the first time.  I decided to go looking for "the Bonk",  a nutcracker just for Macadamias.  It was in the bar area of our last home, so we went searching through the packing boxes looking for it.

Didn't find "the Bonk"  but have cleaned out the dry bar room,  Now for Les to store all his empty wooden wine cases somewhere other than the dining table. The carboard boxes will go in the recycling.

Also found the US road atlas, so can start planning my quilting road trip in earnest.

My husband googled nutcrackers and found another easy one for Macadamias, although I didn't appreciate the $85 price tag.  Beats hitting them with a hammer, while the nut is sitting in a hole in the concrete on the porch!