The only Constant is Change

I finished a quilt today.  While I can't admit that I had a deadline, I was determined to finish this as soon as I could.  Change comes, life alters, energy shifts and I needed a goal.  So.

The front is quite lovely but the registration marks still show and detract from the quilting.  You saw a sample of it in the  previous post.  So far I have forty hours of quilting in this project.  That might count the frogging (rip it rip it) required to fix some minor errors and one major tension issue when the top thread wasn't threaded correctly.  Boy were those four rows of piano keys E A S Y to rip out.

I think my favorite part of machine quilting is when I tear those red snappers off the frame and flip the quilt to the back.  It is just SO COOL to see how it came out.

I want to let you all know that tinkering with machines is no longer an obsession.  I am divesting now.  The  South River NJ haul will go to a new home sometime this winter.  Likely some parts machines too.

It's been a ride.  I have had more fun than I could have imagined.  Betsy came over this weekend and we prepped a machine for a friend of mine.  We laughed and laughed as we remembered: The Pfaff, RUN, that piece of crap barrister book case and that fateful trip to Albany to fetch that unbelievably cheap 221.

I love old machines.  I was a happy camper in my shop.  Life has a way of offering gifts and right now life has offered me an opportunity to go, as Pema Chodron says, to  The Places that Scare You
Maybe this lifelong resistance to enlightenment has come to roost.  Who knows?   I never really cherished enlightenment.  I just hoped for some joy and fun.  That I have had tinkering with machines and now, that era is over.  The machines and all the attendant paraphernalia must go.

I likely will still blog away.  I might even blog about my remaining machines.  Hey, I love my 201-1, my 15-90, that wonderful Necchi BF and Super Nova.  I can't let go of the lovely Brother Zig Zag either.  I might be able to sacrifice the 237.  It isn't as quiet as the Brother and now that I have the lovely treadle work area that fits the Brother, well.....

A Little More Light

I have plenty of light in the quilting "studio".  It just isn't quite in the right place. I have an awful time seeing when I am using matching thread or white on white.  Halfway through this quilt I switched to a different dark thread.  It blends nicely and I can see it more easily. 

Still I struggled.  I showed Steven this  link to the You Tube video by Jamie Wallen demonstrating how to make a side light.   So out to the shop he went to cut and sand the piece of wood.  I spray painted it and the next day I installed the 14 inch under-counter light .

It works great.

When I can pry the light off the "extremely strong double stick mounting tape" I will shift its position; not quite on the edge to cut back on the glare.