Sunday, Sunday

Monday last week I fell at skating and chipped a little bone from my hip, necessitating a bit of time off work. The week has been very quiet, punctuated with brief interludes of going out for brief errands.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm terrible at sitting still.

I spent the first few days reading Shantaram - well worth it if you've not picked it up yet!

It took until Friday for me to come up with a list of things that could be comfortably done from the couch in the odd, not-sitting-not-lying-down posture that was most comfortable...and now I'm in the thick of chipping away at the list.  The first thing on it is something that has been languishing in the background of my life since I sold my shop - my pantograph patterns!  Over the past few years I've been working on ideas, jotting down little scribbles and doodles here and there, photographing various things as references, etc., but not really just sitting down and banging out a few patterns.  During the last few days I've been able to do just that!  It's so exciting to be messing around in my sketchbook for this purpose.  (oh, and for those keeping track of my New Year's resolution...I'm almost caught up on my Illustration Friday challenges, the last few have just not been fit to blog).

Today was my first day out walking in the neighbourhood since my fall...it is the perfect day for it, too...sunny and warm!  Spring is certainly in the air here in Krestova, though the snow is still very deep.  As you can see in the picture at right, the snow piles along our driveway are 5 feet high in places (the ones at the back of the house by the parking lot are substantially higher). The sun is out, things are dripping into puddles, and the neighbourhood is waking up from Winter. I really love living here where each season is so distinct, with its own character and colours.

Our school district has one more week of instructional days, then the two week Spring Break begins.  

I returned from my walk to discover that my family is not interested in waiting for full spring to come...bring on the epic deck backgammon battles!! Chess and Risk are next!

(ooh, look at the snow piles in the background)

Come on Spring.  We're ready.

:)

Lisa

Just a quick note

I just had a peek over at Digiquilter.com and saw that Jodi has got almost my whole catalogue of designs up in digital format for computer operated machines...including my two newest patterns, Bombay Blossom and Mums.

A peek at Digiquilter reveals...

Jodi has been very busy. She's posted several more of my designs there in digital form. For those of you who have computerized quilting machines there is now:

Arrowheads

Let it snow

Automotion

Vineyard

Briar Rose (yup, the one in the blog header)

And finally, Caring Hands. My proceeds from this pattern go to Support Services in Kelowna for women in treatment for Breast Cancer.

If any of these strike your computerized quilting fancy, they are available at Digiquilter!

Thanks!

Lisa

New patterns released at Willow Leaf Studio

I just got a note from Jodi saying that my two newest patterns are available through Willow Leaf Studio (link at left). The first is 'Bombay Blossom', and it's based on one of some lovely hand carved wooden tsaps that my parents have had for years, originally from India.

The second is called simply 'Mums', and it's some sweetie pie flowers that I often am called upon to do freehand on customer quilts. The nice part about this is that now you can use them too.

Happy stitching,

Lisa

New DigiQuilter releases

I just had a peek over at Jodi's digital pattern site and see that she's released 4 more of my patterns in digital format. You can see them there: Asian Dragon, Automotion, Briar Rose and Koi...apparently Koi has been available for a while, I just wasn't aware of it.


I didn't blog about it last night, but I got to go over to a friend's house where about 13 of us started putting together a group quilt for a friend of ours who is about to undergo surgery to give her sister one of her kidneys.

The group was a lot of fun and a lively mix of accomplished quilters and complete non-sewers. What an absolute blast! We're putting together a floral quilt, each doing a block with some manner of applique flower or bouquet on it. My DH is out of town so I took both boys with me and consequently had to leave before everyone else was done. I got a call this morning from our organizer (also a good friend) to say that not all the background blocks are the same size - GULP! Can you believe it? I cut some of them a full inch too short!
I'll be recutting those in about 10 minutes. Aargh.

It's gift quilt season and I'm busy with many different groups (in varying capacities) helping to put together group quilts. I really love this, but it's an organizational nightmare from my end. For the groups that I'm helping organize one group has 25 participants, another has 15+, and yet another I don't really know yet just how many people are hoping to participate. I'm having a hard time keeping them all straight in my head.

The amazing thing about these group quilts is how tremendously significant they are to the recipients. Even non-sewers really 'get it' when a huge group of people rallies together like this to make something so deeply personal for them.

Quilts like these are a true gift from the heart.

Have a great day,

Lisa

Gotta love this business

Only in the quilting business do we get the opportunity to enjoy Christmas at many times of year!

It's bright and sunny outside, the lilacs are budding, the tulips are blooming, it's 18 degrees Celsius and I'm here in the basement quilting snowflakes into this sweet Christmas quilt.

This one is done using Flurry, with a wool batting. I was listening to a wintry book while quilting...and was very relieved to walk upstairs into the sunshine!


In amongst all the customer quilting I'm doing to catch up (don't worry ladies, things ARE getting done) I've been taking a few minutes here and there to work on my artist trading cards. I'm determined to have a few to trade for the last Sunday of the month - if I'm here, that is. I might be away again. We'll see.

I've also been playing with inkwork on the cards that I stamped the other day. They're coming together - some nicer than others. I made one today that's a fir cone out of torn handmade paper mounted on a different colour handmade paper, painted with fibre dyes. Once all the inkwork is done on them I'll post photos. While Mom and I were in Kamloops I picked up the most recent copy of Cloth Paper Scissors and my head is now busting with ideas for ATC's. There's a great article in there about altered recipe cards that's got my head spinning with ideas, too. I did a couple quick sketches and hopefully will get some time to work up some cards based on those ideas at some point during the next few days.

Back to the machine...more glorious quilts to work on!

Happy stitching,

Lisa

More quilting for customers

This is today's work...a lovely argyle-look flannel quilt. The maker built it to be a 'winter' quilt, to come out close to the Christmas season. She asked me to use one of my pantos, "let it snow", for the stitching. I think it suits the quilt perfectly, she made a good choice.

As with most pictures here, you can click on them to view a larger version.

Next on the machine, Bacchanalia. We'll see if I get it all done in one shot, or in many bits. Luckily I have zippered leaders and will be able to remove it if it needs unstitching, or consideration from a distance, or perhaps, a cremation. Ain't the creative process grand?
:)

Happy stitching,
Lisa

Scraptacular

Isn't this a beaut? I love this quilt.

I've been doing customer quilts over the last couple of days, catching up so that I can get back to the Cherub quilt (now officially "Bacchanalia" because I sent the paperwork in).

This one was tons of fun to do...the variety of scraps represented in this quilt is truly amazing! I love how the black gives structure to the rest...everything can be chaotic because that black is so regimented and predictable.

Here's a little detail of one of the blocks. Although almost all of my quilting is done in a magenta pink, you can't really see it - which is good. It would confuse the issue too much if the quilting was too demanding. I didn't want to do a panto over this, as it would nullify it, you'd lose the predictable square rhythm of it - so did a loose, continuous line freehand accentuating the 'exploding' aspect of the blocks.
If I could find a doorway into a parallel universe where I could make a scrap quilt for myself, I'd make this one.

Happy stitching!

Lisa

Sick, but getting better

It's my first venture out of bed since Monday evening...I managed to 'catch' whatever it is that the boys have been struggling with over the past weeks. Thanks to everyone who checked in in the interim, sorry that there has been nothing new for you.

This afternoon I saw over at Willow Leaf Studio that Jodi has released my newest Panto, Deco Rose. Hope you like it.

Happy stitching,

Lisa

**later edit** - it appears that Deco Rose has also been released in digital format, as well. Cheers!

L

I just noticed

I was over at DigiQuilter just now and saw that Jodi's released two more of my designs in digital format... Arabia and Cumulus.

You can see them here.

Happy Stitching,

Lisa

Panto patterns released in Digital Format

I was just over at DigiQuilter, and saw that there are now 4 of my patterns available in CQ, IQ or DXF files - Catalina, Cogs, Delicious and Flurry. Jodi is building that site up bit by bit, and it's looking really good. My patterns can be seen here.

By the way, thanks for comments on my IlloFriday contribution. It was a lot of fun to do, and I look forward to next week's challenge.

Lisa

Not about quilts...(well, mostly)

I posted this photo today for a couple of reasons -

1) I rarely see 'the girls' together anymore in a quiet moment...certainly not when I have the camera. If they are together they are often wrestling! With the our children having gone back to school today the girls are rattling around the house saying, 'hey! where'd everybody go?!"

2) - there you go, for all you doubters out there...I do have TWO black cats, not just one that seems to teleport to different parts of the house! (They do have a strong sibling resemblance though. The funny thing is, the one in the back of the photo is MUCH larger than the one in the front! You would never know by this picture...)

The second photo here is of Saddleback, the peak in the far left of the picture. It's hard to believe that our sons and I climbed that in August last year. It'll certainly be around August again by the time all that snow has melted away again. We've had a stunning amount of snow here over the past few days, followed by a little rain (just to keep the roads interesting). The snow banks in the laneway by our house are over 6 feet deep from ploughing the road! It was -8 this morning (that's in Celcius) and our forecast is to go down to -14 by tomorrow. Good thing the house is nice and snug. This is the best time of year to be a quilter!

I was talking to Jodi Beamish over at Willow Leaf Studio last weekend and she asked me to let you know that Cumulus will soon be available in digital format, that the release for that will probably be this week. You can find all the Willow Leaf Studio and associated patterns at http://www.digiquilter.com/.
I've got one more week of playtime before beginning work on the customer quilts. Stay tuned!
Happy stitching,

L

A Needle Pulling Thread, New Panto Pattern

It's taken me a little while to get this on here - what with the holiday season and all - but here it is:

This is the cover of the issue that my project is in! I walked into my Overwaitea yesterday and saw it on the shelf. I wonder if the excitement of having a project published wears off? I've been anticipating this for months - so much so that it's strangely anticlimactic having it finally out. All the work that I did was 'way back in the summer for this (talk to me sometime about trying to find beautiful Christmas prints in August...). It's interesting that most of the 'major' publicity work that I did over the course of last year all came out the week before Christmas. I guess I'll have to work on my timing!

Anyhoo - the project is called 'Noelle', and is a little angel wall hanging. I hope you like it.

On another note, Jodi Beamish released a new panto pattern yesterday on my behalf, Cumulus. It's based on a freehand cloud pattern that is very popular with my customers on their 'woodsy/outdoorsy' or star and sky quilts. It's fully interlocking with a two row repeat. The clouds in it are sunny day clouds, I find them kind of cheerful.

Well, I'm back to work on Zoe's quilt. It's almost done. I was having a little bit of thread tension trouble, but think it's working now. It's good to get back to stitching after a break.

L

New Longarm Pattern and other news

Here's my most recently released LA pattern...'Cogs' - you'll find it at Willow Leaf Studio, through the link at right.

I got a note last Friday from Carla Canonico of A Needle Pulling Thread magazine that the project samples have been sent back to me, and that their printers are busy printing out the 2006 Festive Issue. This is so tremendously exciting to me as this will be the first pattern that I've ever had the opportunity to have published in a periodical...yay! Needless to say, each time the doorbell rings I'm jumping up to see if it's the courier.

Back to stitchin'!

L

New Longarm Patterns

My other new pattern came out this week, called 'Let it Snow'. It's available through Willow Leaf Studio (link at right). This was an especially exciting pattern for me to design, as it marks the beginning of my comfort with working with computer graphics. Finally I'm getting the hang of CorelDrawX3! It's a great program with more capacity than I will ever use. It's been an adventure learning how to use it. It's a lot of fun...I've got two more patterns on the burners that will be coming out soon.

On another exciting note, I got a shipment of 30+ bolts of fabric for the shop (link at right). They're not on the website yet, but as soon as I finish up this next bit of quilting, I'll be getting busy with that. There are a lot of fun, bright, clear colours...the combinations keep suggesting different new quilts to me. If I could make every quilt that I imagine, we'd be crushed in an avalanche!

Happy stitching!

L

New Longarm Patterns

I meant to mention in my previous post that I released two more LA patterns at the end of last month. Here they are, Arabia (at left) and Catalina (below).
This brings the Threadsongs line to a nice round number, 20 patterns. I'll be breaking that even number soon, though, with a new pattern to be released soon, called "Let it Snow"

I'll post it here as soon as it is available.

If you are looking for either of these patterns, or my other ones, they're available at http://willowleafstudio.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=12

Have fun, happy stitching!

L

Well, true to their word, the good folks at APQS called me back. I'd pulled that shaft hard enough to pull the bushing out of place! Yesterday (after some tactful coaching) I carefully tapped the bushing back into place with the help of some Loc-tite to keep it there. Today, once the Loc-tite had cured enough, I buffed the shaft, replaced the hook assembly and timed the machine. Whoo hoo! It's all back together now, and working fine, so far. I've even put a rather picky little thread on the machine for my tester, and it's running beautifully. There is a chance that the machine hasn't been this nicely timed since it was new.

Another thing that I did the other day is repack the gear grease - that has made the machine MUCH quieter! I'd write more, but I'm dying to get stitching again. I've got a little quilt on that I made at least a year ago - once I know nothing is going to suddenly go wrong, I'll put the next customer quilt on the machine.

It was worth it, becuase the new foot is so much easier to use with templates and rulers (something that I've never mastered the way I wanted to). I've already been playing with some of the cool templates that I've collected over the years and it's so much fun!!

Cheers,

Lisa

Machine Upgrade difficulties

Hi!

This post might only really be of interest to those who have APQS machines. If you like mechanical things, well, read on!

I got my upgrade parts yesterday in the mail. I have wanted to put the new foot on my APQS Millennium for quite some time now and after lots of consultation and research I decided to take the plunge. The only reason I hesitated at all is because I'd have to put the new foot in myself, and it's not a simple thing. There are many things that can go wrong, one of which that, I think, has. While I wait for APQS service dept. to call back I'll just note things down here.

I took lots of pictures of the machine before taking it apart so that I'd have reference to how it looked before I got carried away (The picture at right is of the old style foot). The procedure seems simple - remove the needle plate, the retaining finger, the hook assembly, slide the old foot out, put the new foot in, and re-assemble everything in reverse order. There is a bit of a pitfall, however - IF, once the hook assembly is off and the shaft it was attached to is recessed too far, all the gears that are attached to it will fall off inside the gearbox (suddenly things become MUCH more complicated). This, thank goodness, did not happen to me.

The photo at left is a picture of the original hook assembly from below. You can see the (black) collar behind it...this is what I seem to be having trouble with at this point. I had the hook assembly off, and the collar in what I thought was the right place. I put a new hook assembly on - which did not go on at all easily. I had to work really hard to get it on there. Once it was there, I couldn't move it to adjust the timing. Not at all. Nada. So I pried it off again - taking a really long time, and bending the part in the process. I went to sand the shaft to hopefully put the original hook assembly back on, but could not turn the flywheel freely anymore - it would go part way, then catch. I could reverse it, but when it got to that same spot it would catch again. AAArgh!

This morning I discovered that the hook shaft can protrude a little. If I push it (gently, no force needed) back into place, everything runs fine (I still haven't put the original hook assembly back on). It can slip forward though. I'm worried that when I pulled the new (now bent) hook assembly off it, that I slipped some internal collar on that shaft that kept it from moving forward. I'm not sure that there's anything to stop it from doing that while I'm stitching - that would be catastrophic, bringing everything to a grinding halt.

And so, I wait by the phone. With my luck they will phone when I'm picking up the boys from school. They always call back and always are extremely helpful. I'm just not good at waiting.

Well, I'll keep you all updated on how this goes. Hopefully someone out there will find this information useful.

Lisa

My studio

I thought I'd better get these pictures up. Because I do so much mail order, I have many customers who have not been in my shop space (yes, it is a home based business, but I do have many local customers come in). My DH recently helped me rearrange things to help make it all more 'customer friendly'. The toughie in all this is that it still has to function really well as a working studio space.

We did find, however, that once the rearrangeing was done that there is actually MORE ROOM in here than there was before! Not only can I navagate around the machine without difficulty, but the customers don't end up pushed up against it all the time! It's now under a nice, bright light, and the sun does not come in the window in my eyes while I'm working anymore.


Here are a few of the shelves of merchandise I have now, too. Things are easier to see, and easier to reach. The other shelves are over on the other side of the room, with all the Kona Bay, print fabrics and Modas. I have to say, I know just how lucky I am to get to work in such a bright, colourful space.

Speaking of work, I should get back to it...


:)
L