Micro Handles

I am posting photos of the micro handles I have on my Innova . They are Marilyn Badger's. The work very well, handles can be folded up out of the way and can be removed pretty easily if you need to.  The only time mine get removed is when my husband has to time my machine, which is not very often.

Saturday January 28, 2017

January is almost over. I don't want to wish my life away, but spring can't get here soon enough for me! I have had busy since I last posted on the 13th.  My carpet in the basement has dried out and doesn't seem to smell.  My LG fridge had been giving us problems. A drain line apparently had frozen. I emptied it out and unplugged it. We left it unplugged for a couple of days and it seems to be working fine. Two things to be thankful for.

I got a show quilt done for a client, Lori D., she is going to enter it into the Dixie Quilt Guild show here in St. George this April. Hope it does well for her. It always scares me when I know there is going to be a judge looking the quilt over. Hopefully the judges won't say.... "good grief who did she get to quilt this?".  I was very pleased with how it turned out and so was Lori.  I have another quilt top coming next week that is the same quilt pattern as Lori's,  just a different color combination. It will also be entered into the show.

At our last quilt guild meeting, we were told that the quilt our guild sent to the state show will be featured on the front of the Utah Quilt Guild's booklet (or news letter). Patti V pieced it and I quilted it. I did get paid some for quilting the quilt, but I gave the guild $200 off my price. I expect to get some publicity from this.... so far I have not, but I am sure Patti will say something and I would imagine I will get listed as the quilter on signage at the show.  I am honored to be asked to quilt, I am happy with getting paid and guess I should not complain about not being recognized for my quilting. (I might add that we have a lot of amazing and very talented longarm quilters in our quilt guild.)

 Pati V's quilt! she is an amazing quilter!

I have been quilting for quite a few years and don't know if I am getting burnt out or if it is just the stress of everything in my life and the current state of the country that is my issue.  I have been having a harder time getting excited about doing custom work.  I have not raised my prices in a long time. I decided to check out pricing of other quilters in our area and around the country. I was surprised at how much lower my pricing was.  I don't know about the quilt stores in our area,  but have been told their pricing has not changed. The going price charged by longarm quilters I looked at started at 2 cents per square inch for simple edge to edge, higher for more complex quilting. Their light custom work starts at 4 1/2.  The type of custom work I do most often, which always includes ruler work,  is listed at 8 plus cents per square inch.  I don't have a computerized machine and therefore have to use a ruler if I want to do accurate stitch in the ditch type work. The heavy custom I just finished I charged 5 1/2 cents and my client gave me an extra $100. I was very happy indeed. I did raise my pricing the first of the year.  I am not working for less than $10 and hour. The articles I have read about how much should be charge for quilting and running of a quilting business is $25 an hour.  If my husband's job is secure, I will be cutting back my client quilting a lot and focusing on my art work.

 I am looking forward to the Dixie Quilt Guild retreat next month! It is a time to slow down and make contact with friends I haven't had much time to interact with! Today..... I am going to get a charity quilt loaded for the Dixie Quilt Guild and get it done (maybe). Then work on some piecing.  I will be taking some time this spring/summer for myself though. My niece and her husband are renting a lovely place in Castle Valley in the Moab, Utah area. I plan on spending at least a few days there, bugging them and painting. But for now .... back to work.

 Happy Quilting,
Charlotte

Friday the 13th

Just a quick note.......My Friday the 13th was a pretty good day! I was made aware of a cleaning product that is truly amazing.  As I posted the first of the week, we had a issue with our pool. The chlorinator line blew apart and we had water in the basement. My goodness after it dried it smelled so bad.  I used Febreze carpet cleaner and Febreze spray on the carpet, it helped, but the smell was still there.  A couple of friends told me about a product called OdoBan. If you have never heard about this product you must try it! You can purchase it by the gallon. It is concentrated 1 gallon makes 32 gallons.  I got it a Home Depot in the cleaning products section. It is Amazing!!!!! The house no longer smells like a huge pair of my husbands shoes! I will be using it in my carpet cleaner from now on! I also used the OdoBan in a  bucket to mop my studio floor!

Tomorrow is quilt guild day. I have a client quilt on the frame and ready to go. It is a custom and she has done such a great job of piecing.  I had forgotten that I had to make the back. The fabric was very close to the exact amount that was needed to cover the back. She had a piece of left over fabric from the front of the quilt and I was able to cut it to size, piece a strip together. I will have enough to load and put the clamps on the side of the quilt. I am doing a meandering feather in the border so I will not have to use a ruler right up against the  leaders. It will work ok. Had I decided on doing something that required ruler work on the outer border, I would need to put extra strips of fabric to allow for the 4 inches extra I need. I am anxious to get to work on this one. If my client does not care I will post a picture of the finished quilt.

Now...... I am going to get ready for bed. Running the carpet shampooer two days in a row is tiring.
Good night!

Sunday.... what a day

My day did not get started off that great today. Dave picked up water softener salt on his way home from work this morning. He took a couple bags down stairs and started screaming for me to get down there.  I couldn't imagine what was wrong, but he was very upset so I hurried down as fast as I could.  My studio floor had a inch of water covering the entire floor, the carpet in front of the door was wet, the carpet in the bathroom was wet and carpet in the other bedroom had a wet area.  I mean wet... soggy,  icky and squishy! A PVC  L fitting, which had been factory welded with glue, on the chlorinator had blown apart and the pool as running, so it was pumping water. The pool was not built when the house was built. The people did not think about where they were putting the pool pump and the pool heater.  Had they thought about it, really though about it, it would not have been put so close to the house.  It would have cost a lot more to for the electrical to locate the pump and heater on the other side of the pool away from the house, I assume that is the reason it was located where it is. The company that did the landscaping in the entire yard really did not think about where water would run when it rained either... the yard has way to much concrete. The landscaping looks cool, it just in not very practical, but that is another story.  When the ground is cold it does not absorb water as well as it does when it is hot and dry!

It took most of the day to clean it up.  I would still be cleaning had it not been for Candice and Dave.  I have a space heater and a fan in the hall. The ceiling fan in the bedroom is going.  The carpet is drying. I used the carpet cleaner to suck water up from the floor in my studio. I am impressed with the self stick tiles I put down a few years ago.  They have had water on them more than once, never as much as today though. I lost some of my expensive pastel paper, some sketch books got wet. I am drying the drawings I care about out. I threw a lot of stuff in the garbage. The floor is clean! And Candice cooked us a wonderful dinner!



 I started working on this peacock quilt last week and got the squares sewn together last night. I had planned on working on it all day today. The peacock panel was made on my embroidery machine in tiles, in-the-hoop. I did this 2 or 3 years ago  and have finally gotten around to making it into a quilt. I am using 2 1/2 inch (unfinished) half square triangles and 2 1/2 inch blocks. I fussy cut some of the flowers out for the four corners. I am making the pattern up as I go.  I want to make this a good sized quilt... maybe queen size. I have enough fabric to make two or three quilts, but won't make another embroidered peacock panel. I had hoped to have it done for our quilt guild quilt show this spring, but that is not going to happen. I am being very, very careful with my cutting and sewing. I am careful and exact with the quilting I do, but sewing things together....... well I like art quilting. These are some of the fabrics I had purchased to do a peacock quilt, when the fabric was in the stores and that was a few years ago. I have enough to do more than one!

Because of the flood my day did not go as planned.  I still have Christmas  decorations to take down and put away. My Christmas village have to be put away before the tree can be taken out. So many things to do and sooooo little time! 

I have spent to much time on the computer today too.  So..... I am going to close, check my space heater, see how the carpet is drying out and get ready for bed.  I have a lot to do tomorrow. I have a client's quilt handing on my design wall in my studio, so I can decide how to quilt it. Thankfully it was not close to the floor, so it did not get wet.  I will close for now. 

January 6, 2017

Happy New Year.  My kids made it back to New York fine. I sure is quite here without them. We all miss them. I really miss Megan's laugh! But, Brooklyn is where they live and if Megan had not moved to New York she probably would not have met Patrick. It is wonderful to see Megan happy!
Megan did my hair color before she left.  She always gets it just the color I want! My next job will be to get all the decorations taken down and put away. I enjoy putting them up, but really don't care for taking them down and fitting everything back into the proper boxes and totes.

I am ready for warmer weather! All the photos of snow is so pretty, but.... I don't miss the snow one bit!

I picked up my Fiber Art pieces from the St. George Art Museum yesterday. A few will go up on the walls once I get the Christmas things down, but a lot of them will just be rolled up, put in bags and put in the closet.  The museum has asked for donation of art work this year. I am thinking about donating my piece called 'Stages'. It was made to represent the prairies. It is a tryptic that I will never display. It was piece that everyone enjoyed and it fits in a venue like the Museum. It would be nice if they would purchase it, but that didn't happen. It would benefit from being put in a shadow box frame, but I don't have access to the tools to make a frame, nor the extra funds to pay someone to make such a frame.

I finished a quilt for Donna S. She picked it up today and was very happy with it. I really like how it turned out. We used wool batting and Superior Thread's Sew Fine in the top and the bobbin. I used a panto called Brilliance. I love this pantograph. It is replacing Square Spiral as my favorite.

Now..... time to get a bit of paper work done. It is time to remit the taxes I have collected to the state.  Happy Quilting!