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I did get some more sewing done over our kid-free weekend, including another paper-pieced Bee block, and quilting and binding a long-overdue project. More on those soon.
In the meantime, I thought I’d share one of the main reasons I’ve had such a hard time finding the motivation to sew over the last handful of weeks. I wrote about it on my other blog.
And yes, that will DEFINITELY mean more things added to my to-do list!
Hello, gorgeous.
Meet my new best friend, the Janome Memory Craft 6600. She doesn’t have a name yet, feel free to leave suggestions. Gotta think of a good one, as I suspect she and I are going to be together for a long, long time.
I’ve been checking out this machine ever since Dana gave one away as part of the original ORBCo quilt-along, nearly a year ago. But it felt out of my league. Way more than I needed. My still-pretty-new Janome was working fine. Of course, I started sewing more and more, and the minor shortcomings of my machine became more annoying. More than anything, I wanted something a little more hefty and solid, and a bigger throat for cramming big quilts.
And, then, Amy got hers. She was kind enough to email back & forth with me, telling me what she thought about it, where she got it, etc. Our husbands apparently are of the same school of thought: “oh, just stop talking about it and get it already!” They’re good ones, the both of ‘em. And then I found out my local shop not only didn’t have any in stock, but was selling it for $200 less than where she got hers… so off I drove.
I love it. It’s big and heavy, and feels really solid. The needle motion is smooth, it’s reasonably quiet. I’m quickly coming to love the knee-lift bar, which is perfect when you’re chain-piecing (which I do as often as humanly possible). The extra couple of inches in the throat makes a huge difference when working on a quilt of any real size.
The Accu-Feed foot is the bomb-fricking-diggity. So much smoother than my old walking foot, easy to adjust if you find the top isn’t feeding evenly enough with the bottom. And SO quiet. I don’t know about you, but my old walking foot was like old train tracks. All clackety-clack and after an hour or so, I worried something was just going to snap right off. So loud and clunky, I was completely stressed every time I use it because my sewing space shares a wall with my kids’ room, and I’ll be damned if I was going to wake them up too early from a nap. This one? No problem. Smooth, straight, quiet. While straight-line quilting is still tedious, this makes it much less of a chore.
I tried a little free-motion in the store, and noticed an enormous improvement in my tension when I switched to a Janome bobbin case specifically for FMQ (I think it lessens the bobbin tension by 40% or something). I’ll give you the full low-down when I do a real quilt that way.
One of my favorite bells & whistles is the Start/Stop button. I loved it doing long, straight quilting lines, and I think I’m REALLY going to love it for free-motion. Taking my foot out of the equation just means one less thing to think about. It’s a bigger perk than I might have imagined, and while I initially panicked about hitting “stop” at the right time, it quickly became a pretty natural motion. Very conveniently located.
Also, the thread-cutter rocks. A little noisier than I expected it to be, but awesome for those times when you are trying to lift up a big quilt to try and find that bobbin thread to snip, without actually cutting a hole in your quilt.
Now, all I need is to find an excuse to use even half of those decorative stitches.
I’ve had it almost two weeks now, and while I may feel a twinge of guilt at the excess of it all, I have zero buyer’s remorse. I’ll keep you all posted as I get to really put it through its paces, but so far, two thumbs up.
As in, retreat.
I will admit to some ambivalence as I was packing up for this weekend’s quilting retreat. I was excited, sure, but also anxious. In addition to my personal reasons for feeling bad about leaving, I was also nervous about going. What if I didn’t have the sewing chops to keep up? What if people were feeling antisocial? What if they didn’t liiiiike me? (Yes, when I meet new people, I’m 15 again.)
And, then, I walked in the door and Amanda Jean gave me a big hug. And there were bowls full of fabric scraps and a bunch of Singer Featherweights and cutting mats all over the place. And I knew it was SUCH a good idea to have come.
I had never been to a quilting retreat before, but I can only hope that this is what they’re all like. There were 11 of us from all over the place. One person lived down the street, another came from Portugal. But within an hour of arriving, we had rearranged all of the furniture in the common rooms at the Inn, set up tables, and started stitching away. And with a shared love of all things fabric, we were instantly a bunch of sisters, ooh-ing and aah-ing over each other’s work and chatting in a shorthand vocabulary.
I loved the amount of time and the way it was organized. We had a lot of free time to do whatever we wanted (read: sew and go fabric shopping), which meant a lot of whirring machines, steam shooting from irons, and chatting with new friends about a common obsession interest. Amanda Jean did two lectures/workshops/whatever-you-want-to-call-them about scrap quilting, scrap management, and the way to get the very most out of the very littlest bits of leftover fabric. She brought great samples, did a demo, and then sent us all off to try it out. I felt like I left with some great new ideas, and it was nice to learn about someone else’s process and be inspired to try new things. I hope to start trying things in a whole new direction. But it was also very manageable and I didn’t feel overwhelmed by having entirely too much new information thrown at me.
All told, it was pretty much a solid 48 hours of quilt-y goodness. And you know what? That was just right. The rule of a good party is to leave while you’re still having fun, right? I think one more day might have ended up being too much, since there’s only so many projects and tools you can bring from home. It didn’t feel so short that we couldn’t get things done (I got an entire quilt top cut and pieced, thankyouverymuch), but it left us wanting more (to the point that we’re already talking about next year).
The Inn itself was gorgeous. If you ever find yourself in Fort Collins, do yourself a favor and stay at the Inn at City Park. Tara and Alexis are the innkeepers and will take fantastic care of you. Just beware, you’ll feel so instantly at home that you’ll start leaving things all over the house. And if Tara is going to be cooking for you… you may want to consider some elastic-waist pants. Insanely delicious food and lots of it. We were exceedingly well taken care of this weekend. And you can feel free to geek out about all things crafty (including quilting) with Tara. You will love her so much, you’ll want to put her in your suitcase and take her home with you.
It was a great, great weekend. Totally worth every minute and every penny. If you have the opportunity and you haven’t yet done something similar, I say GO. I came back feeling refreshed and excited, both in sewing and for my own personal stores of energy. Thanks to Tara, Alexis, Kathy, Steve, Jenny, Amanda, Jen, Christina, Kate, Katie, Diana, Cindy, and Julie for making it so very much fun.
See you next year.
Tags: bed & breakfast, colorado, fort collins, inn, quilt retreat
For the last six months or so, my sewing space has been tucked into one side of our guest bedroom. It’s a bit cramped, and sometimes it’s a problem sharing a wall with my kids’ bedroom when I want to sew while they nap. But it works reasonably well.
Until it actually turned into summer.
We’ve had a cool, rainy “summer” here in New England. Cool enough that we made it most of the way through July without seriously considering getting our two air conditioners down from the attic. Sunday, though, was hot and muggy and it was time to make it happen. Parked the kids in front of Backyardigans while we set them up in our room and in theirs. And then, before bedtime, I did I trial run: while both air conditioners were running, I turned on my iron. And pop went the circuit breaker.
In our… ahem… charming old house, the entire second floor of the house is on a single breaker. It’s a miracle we can actually run both a/c units at the same time, and clearly that represents about the upper limit of what the system can handle.
The prospect of no sewing until we’re done with the air conditioners is quite unacceptable, so while M read the kids their bedtime story, I started hauling my sewing necessities down to the dining room.
While I like having a larger table, I don’t really like having my sewing space set up in the dining room as a long-term solution. It’s a huge pain on the off chance we actually want to use the room for, you know, eating. Plus, it leaves things a little too accessible to my curious (nearly)-two-year-olds. And we all know how quickly sewing spaces can turn into a huge mess.
But, it’ll just have to do for now, and I’ll have to do my best to keep it tidy. Good thing I’m leaving Wednesday morning! There’s only so much damage I can do in the next 48 hours. Though I did make my first attempt at a block for the Doll Quilt Swap… we’ll see what it turns into!
Tags: DQS7
