More catching up

I've had my friend Sue's quilt on my longarm for several months. I kept putting off doing it because I wanted to work on my own projects. She told me there was "no rush at all - do it whenever I felt like it" when she gave it to me. I should always make people give me a deadline - I work well with deadlines. When there isn't a deadline I can easily procrastinate if I'd rather do something else.

It was so good to get this one finished and off the machine. This is the first time I've done all the ruler work to create the parallel lines. Straight lines are the hardest thing to do on a longarm! I had a lot of fun quilting the veins in the leaves freehanded. I used an all over design in the center called "Forest Floor". The center quilting is done with King Tut variegated thread. I love that thread - it is just beautiful. It really glows against the center fabrics. I really like how it turned out, and Sue was very pleased, I'm happy to say.

On Sunday night when I finished this quilt I loaded the back of the last customer quilt I have to do. When I was behind the machine straightening out the huge king-size back in preparation for rolling it onto the front backing roller, the machine suddenly came on. Now I know we don't have ghosts, so I wondered if I was imagining things. But no - the light turned on, the motor that lowers the take up roller started to make noise, and the take up roller dropped to jam itself against the machine. I reached around the table, shut off the machine, and moved to the front. I could move the machine at all on it's tracks - it was totally jammed under the roller. So I turned it back on to raise the roller. When I pushed the keypad to raise the roller all I got was a "click". Since then I've been on the phone daily with both my dealer in Centralia,Washington and the tech guy at the plant in North Carolina. This was a new problem for them - no one has had this happen before. I did have witnesses the second, third and fourth time the machine turned itself off and on - this was on Wednesday - or I'm sure they would have thought I was imagining it. We've been trying lots of different things and last night finally figured out what we are sure is the solution. I had no idea when I started on this longarm adventure that the repair and maintenance would be mainly up to me. This non-mechanical person, married to another non-mechanical person, has really learned a lot! Keep your fingers crossed for me that the electric switch I'm buying today gets rid of my "ghost".