Back in the saddle

Oh, my - I have to say that I LOVE my new phone. It's the best upgrade I ever made in a phone (and the cheapest as well). I wasn't so sure about this fancy case the guy sold me. It's a Samsung case and I wasn't sure I would like the flap thing. I LOVE the flap thing. You can answer the phone without opening the flap, you can see the time through the flap and other little symbols, like battery power, etc.  

My new phone

It's going to be a learning curve for sure to get to know all the details of the darn thing. Yesterday morning, I'm at the park trying to take a photo. Not happening. I got into something called Bixby Vision which every time I took a photo, it would provide me thousands of like images. I don't want that. I just want a picture of the girls!  I figured it out and I got some very cute pictures of the girls. You see - I'm not so bad with technology - I just need some patience and time!

And yesterday, I didn't use the laptop at all! But then you didn't get pictures on the blog either. Today, you have pictures which were edited on the laptop. I MUST install my photo editing software on the new computer today.

Yesterday, I got back to serious long arming! I loaded the backing which was huge and then the quilt. It's an all-over design and so no issues or hiccups. So here I am at the end of the quilt but WAIT - there is a ton of batting left over. Why?

Tons of batting leftover

That's because there were not one, but TWO quilts to be done for this customer. The quilts were identical as well. So I had loaded the backing and the batting (for both) and once I was done one quilt, I loaded the second top and I was good to go.

Two  identical quilts quilted one after the other

And here are the two quilts off the machine.  It was HUGE to work with those two quilts and a wee bit cumbersome to work with that huge backing and all that batting, but it was fine.

Two quilts  - DONE!

Here's a picture of one of them.

Customer quilt - DONE!

It was great to have that EMPTY cutting mat to work on to first cut the quilts apart and then it was a breeze to trim them up.

Trimming the quilts

I felt positively in control all day yesterday and I LOVE that feeling. Even though I have a LOT of work to do, I'm in control and I love it!

We watched a movie last night (at home) - that's our weekly entertainment it seems and one night a week out for dinner. And I grabbed my grab n go bag and did more embroidery while I watched. I'm making great progress with the embroidery and I'm happy about that. I think I shall take the grab n go bag with me wherever I go and I may just get the darn project done some day in the near future!

Embroidery progress

I'm going to sneak one of my own quilts onto the long arm later today. Why? You remember all those neatly labelled tubs full of projects to be quilted?

Tubs full of quilt tops, backings and binding

I have one tub left to fill.

One last tub to sort

And there is this HUGE pile of quilt tops/backings/bindings that are supposed to fit in the tub. I don't think that's going to happen.

This needs to go in the tub

Hence - I need to get a couple of these quilts quilted so that everything will fit in the tub and I can clear up that last little area. Plus it would be nice to get a handle on some of those quilts of mine and actually get some done this year. That may go on the list of things to do in 2018 as well. I'm still thinking long and hard about that - no firm decisions yet.

Did I show you this picture? This is some of the stuff that was in my office. Boxes and boxes of paper, a sewing machine, a sewing machine table, a regular table, an ironing press, quilts and more paper and all the stuff from my inspiration board. I did manage to squeeze it all into the car in one trip! And now a lot of it has been put away or still waiting for me to go through. A little bit at a time. I tried to dump everything into the office. It's best to have one hugely messy room than little messes in lots of rooms.  I will get this place cleaned - a wee bit at a time.

Stuff from my office

And on that note - Oh WAIT - I see that Miss Lexi was on the computer earlier and I think she has something to say. Check out her blog.

I edited a ton of pictures this morning and a lot more to go. I'm doing great on my "TO DO" list and well, I'm off to do a major project today.

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!