Meet Pierce, my trusty quilting machine. My mom and dad bought him for me when my mom gave me her Handi Quilter frame back in July 2008. He has quilted almost 950 quilts! Yikes, that's a lot of quilts! I took him in to the shop once when the thread kept shredding and it turns out it was the foot that kept catching on the thread. I have gone through 5 or 6 feet on this poor machine. A couple have broken, one broke when the needle went through the foot. The needle didn't break, the foot did! One broke in half, just wore the poor thing out. This current foot has lasted the longest, a couple years now and I'm crossing my fingers it will last a little longer. Every once in a while I will see a little piece of metal on top of the quilt and I know I should probably order another foot, but they are expensive, about $35 each. I have to order a Juki foot for the machine, for some reason the Janome feet don't fit. So weird. But, whatever works right?
Here's a quilt loaded and ready to be quilted. It takes about 10 minutes for me to quilt one of these little guys, especially if the backing fabric is already loaded, just pin, quilt, cut, unroll and you have a quilt ready for binding. Yep, those are some glasses I got at JoAnn's for about $2 and they match the quilt. I can't do anything without glasses anymore so I have a pair at the quilting machine, one at the sewing machine, one on the couch so I can read my Bible, one in the Kitchen for reading recipes, one upstairs for the computer, one at the embroidery machine...it's ridiculous. The only place I don't have a pair is at school because I didn't want the kids seeing me wear them. This year, I'm going to have to wear them at school because my arm is too short to hold papers and read them. I have to lay the papers on the desk and stand up or I can't see them anymore! When did that happen? At least I like my new glasses now and am happy to wear them. I've got to get a nice chain so I can wear them around my neck and I won't lose them. Or, wear them on top of my head and then I will forget I have them on and still won't be able to see!
Here's the other thing I was working on today. Patches for my husband's tennis team. The boys' season finished up and they will be having the party this summer. He needs patches to give out to the top players and I have to finish them up before he can have the party. I have until the end of the month. I wish I could just let the machine do all the work, but every time I would walk away and let the machine do its thing, it would snag or pull the thread too tight and mess up a patch. I think it messed up three patches on me and I had to start them over. There is no 'back' button on this and if it messes up, you can't just fix it. It's start the whole thing over. At least these things don't cost me $10 each anymore. The fabric is from some old Choir shirts that were thrown in the trash about 10 years ago from my high school. I saved them because they were satin and I thought they were too good for the trash. I knew they would come in handy for something. Sure enough, you save something long enough and you find a use for it. That's why my house is so cluttered. I can't throw anything away. As soon as I do, I find a use for that 'saved' item. Someone want to call Hoarders Anonymous!?
No comments:
Post a Comment