Precision….lawn mowing??

Posted on April 30, 2009 by Suzanne

I’ve been dreaming about quilting patterns lately, but last night’s dream took a turn for the weird.

There were lawn mowers.

And people were buying pantograph patterns for lawn mowing. Some were push mowers, others used riding mowers. Some were hand-guided, others used computers to execute the patterns in their lawns. I suppose they could probably use GPS to guide their mowers.

It occurred to me this morning that instead of No Sew Zones, you’d need…wait for it…No Mow Zones, in order to have the computer avoid obstacles like houses or trees.

I’m not surprised that I was dreaming about looking through pattern catalogs, that’s what I did for quite awhile last night.

But can someone tell me this?

Why the hell was I dreaming about lawn mowers? I haven’t touched a lawn mower in…at least 5 years!!!

Sweet

Posted on April 29, 2009 by Suzanne

New quilt. New fabric. I went to the quilt shop in Cedar Falls because my selection of pinks was seriously lacking. Seriously. Over half of the pinks in the picture are new.

I had a chocolate brown fabric from MY shop in mind when I dreamed up this quilt, but then I fell in love with this polka dot at the shop in CF.

I love polka dots.

So now, when I’m not trying to do a million other things, I’m shoving 18 bazillion pink and white four patches through the sewing machine. And about 9 bazillion tri-recs units, too.

Any guesses as to what I’m making. You’ll never guess.

Or maybe you will.

Whatever it is, I think it’s going to be very sweet.

Suzanne

p.s. patterns. all right already. i’ll work on patterns. i don’t need to sleep.

Life, Liberty, Happiness, Quilted.

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Suzanne

I just shared this over on MQResource, but figured I’d better post it here, too.

Funny, I’ll call it “finished,” when it clearly has a long way to go — but getting past the quilting is a pretty big hurdle. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to bind it — I think I’m going to face it, so that what you see here is all that will be visible on the front, I don’t want to add another visual element to the edges.

The quilting in the red and white stripes is freehand. I did it earlier in the week, but had to pull it off the frame, partially finished so that my IQ could be installed.

My intention was to freehand the blue as well, but then I had a better idea, and let the IQ do the blue section with a star design that came preinstalled. It’s not that easy to see, but it’s there. It was very awesome to watch it stitch out. And then go answer the phone and then talk to a customer whilst the computer kept working.

I thought it was pretty funny when I realized where the inspiration for the lettering came from. Actually a lot of the inspiration came from the same source, I guess.

I really did think I WAS being original and clever. And then I opened the door to the shop and looked down at the welcome mat in front of the door. It’s red and white stripes with the words Life, Liberty, Happiness on it. Duh. I’ve only been stepping over that thing nearly every day for most of year now. I’m pretty observant that way.

New Adventure #2

Posted on April 24, 2009 by Suzanne

I’ve taken the plunge, and added an Intelliquilter to my longarm quilting machine.

Oh wow. This is SO COOL.

I’m going to go back and fill up the rest of that practice quilt sandwich, and I’ll tell you more later.

Now we are friends

Posted on April 23, 2009 by Suzanne

We’ve still got a long way to go before we are wearing socks made on this machine, but simply getting it cast on and knitting was a wonderful hurdle to have made it over today.