I should buy a lottery ticket!

Perhaps today is my lucky day? First - I slept in - not sure why I'm tired. Maybe the heat although normally that doesn't bother me too much. I bet it's that I didn't drink enough yesterday and that makes me tired, especially after my spin class. Note to self:  DRINK lots today.

Anyway, I was puttering in the studio this morning. I'm not even sure what I was doing/looking for. Oh - I was getting the camera off the long arm where I left it yesterday. So I saw the quilt that I'm going to talk about this morning. Then I grabbed the pizza (project) box that it was sitting on. Yep - that has stuff in the box pertaining to the quilt. I grabbed it because I thought I should start working on the borders. There was an envelope immediately beneath that box. Could that be the envelope that I talked about the other day? The one with the pattern that someone had given me? YEP - that was the envelope.  Yeah!!!!  Now the envelope has been filed where it should have been filed when I first received it.

Five minutes later I was in my office puttering there. I realized that Saturday is the day to take in our shredding and I still have a HUGE pile of stuff to sort through.

Paperwork to sort through for shredding

I had originally left it on the kitchen counter so if I had a few spare minutes, I could sort through a folder or two. I want to blame DH for guilting me into moving it so it didn't look so messy on the counter and now weeks later, I haven't done anything with it. I moved it all back to the kitchen counter. I have TWO days in which to get that done.

As I was moving this paperwork, I noticed a couple of other things that just needed to have the staples removed and that was going in my scrap paper pile. I moved two of those groups of paper and guess what I found???  The letter from UPS to open my account. How it got there????  I was super excited until I noticed that the expiry date for the code was YESTERDAY!!!!!   NO!!!!!!   I'm going to call them today to see if they can't get this to work. Or I might try the code. I have a package to send tomorrow. CRAP!!!!   But at least I found it and I really must be better organized for this kind of thing. I'm better, but still a long ways to go.

The good news about the office is that there is NO NEW paperwork coming in here that isn't dealt with right away. That's the good news. Well, mostly dealt with otherwise how did I lose my UPS account form. God - I'm such a liar!

Now let me share the bad news with you. I NEVER prewash my fabrics when I'm quilting. I've never had issues. I always wash my quilts with dye magnets or chemicals to catch the dye should anything run. A couple of Sit n Sews ago, I was working on a quilt. We were having trouble with the iron leaking and this happened.

OH CRAP - the red fabric ran

I'm not even sure that that was my fabric as these blocks were made as part of an exchange. Each month we made so many blocks for each other. There were three of us in the group. The red is quite distinct from the other fabrics so technically it doesn't fit. But doesn't matter - it's in the quilt. I wonder if the others had issues? Have they washed their quilts?

This is what the quilt top looks like right now. It's a flying geese pineapple. The pattern is called Spring Beauty by The Rabbit Factory. The border is appliqued flowers, but I'm thinking I'll nix the applique and add a white border (small one) and then I was thinking of piano keys for the outer border or I might just save myself some time and just use one piece of fabric for the border. I'll be checking through my 30s stash later this weekend.

Flying geese pineapple quilt

After the iron leaked on my block and the red ran, I had a mild panic attack and then ran upstairs to get the Synthrapol which is pretty good at taking errant dyes out of fabric. I threw the row into the sink with the chemical and let it soak.

Quilt row soaking in the kitchen sink

That seemed to take it out as it looks pretty good in this picture.

Errant dye has been removed

 So I continued sewing the quilt together. I'm not sure that it's my imagination, but I still seem to see a reddish cast to that block.

Doesn't that still look red???

 I think part of it is the seam allowance showing through to the front. Shoot. What am I going to do? I'm going to finish the quilt and then I'm going to wash the entire quilt. I do have two extra blocks that do NOT have that red in them, but there are way more blocks than two that have that red. Best to just leave the quilt as it is. I'm going to wash it with Synthrapol and probably a couple of dye magnets and I'm going to pray a LOT!

I've been lax in putting up a quote of the day, but this picture was in the same folder as the quilt so here you go. I'd rather have people talk about me because I left a little glitter in their life than if I had left them with a bad taste in their mouth.

Quote of the day

I also got lucky with the long arm computer. I have purchased a number of designs and the couple that I had used were technically not a nesting design. Nesting is when one row of the pattern has to nest into the other instead of being done in perfectly straight rows. Hopefully, that makes sense. I could not get those patterns to load. By reading through some of the technical material (don't I always say - READ THE MANUAL?). Well, there's no manual, but there are blog posts with information and videos. So I read several blog posts and the other night I sat and fiddled with the software. I was ready! But was I brave enough to try on a customer quilt?  I thought I should hold off until I knew that everything was working just right.

I still have some charity quilts but why not use one of my quilts. So this quilt of mine got quilted yesterday. 

My quilt - quilted!!!!

I had a wee bit of a moment when it didn't seem to be quilting like it should have. But the next row of stitching solved my problem and I was good to go. Now that was very easy. It nested just fine and you can't really see in the picture below how it nests together. Which is GOOD!!!

Even better - this is one of my UFOs for 2018. Maybe I will get all those projects sewn, quilted and bound in this year. Now wouldn't that be a coup for me!!!!   There's hope because my goal is to quilt ONE of my quilts every week. I have two quilts of mine on the list for this week (one didn't get done last week). I have one more customer quilt and that magazine quilt to get done this week and I've nothing scheduled for the entire weekend. Hmm - let's see what happens. I'm getting excited about this. There are ZERO regrets for spending all that money for the computer.

Detail of quilting

 Next up, I loaded the customer quilt and tried a different pattern and I got that one done too. OK - the only thing left is to figure out how to get the exact measurements for the length and width. No - that didn't come out right because I know how. What happened is on one quilt, the pattern was a ½ inch too long and on the other, it was a ½ inch too short. Not a huge deal in either case, but I want to know why I'm not consistent. More learning.

Customer quilt - done!

Amazing how our society is driven by numbers. Did you make your 10,000 steps today? If you ride that spin bike just a little harder, you can make the 30K in less than 60 minutes and then there's the software. I use Grammarly and it sends me a weekly report on my writing. I get three stat boxes once a week. The first one is telling me that I'm making advanced errors and if I buy the Premium software, they can help me fix those advanced mistakes. I want them to give me an example of what an advanced mistake is? I know it's probably something with dangling participles or something like that. And that seems to be a lot of mistakes. It must have been a week that I blogged for myself and for QUILTsocial. Or they're just goading me to upgrade to satisfy my curiosity. Honestly, give me a one week trial - I don't want numbers. That tells me NOTHING!

Seriously?? My advanced grammar is that bad???

I also find these stats a bit weird. I NEVER have had a missing period in any of my writing so we know that this is not right. The comma?  Oh yes - that seems to be my biggest issue. I need to brush up on how to work that comma thing.  And the missing article? Well, that happens a lot with captions for photos so I get that one.

The second mistake - I don't get that one. 

And then there is the comparison to your peers. Another ploy to make you want to be better so you will upgrade. Look at how many words Grammarly checked during that week. Almost 20,000 words making me more productive than 96% of other users.  Gosh - I could write a novel - I'm so prolific!!!!

My accuracy is at 21%. Part of that was because of that nasty keyboard. Even if you went back and fixed the typos that happened because of the keyboard, it still counted as an error. That sucks. But I used more unique words than 98% of the other users. Hmm - I'm just using regular old words here - I wonder what the other writers are saying? See Dick run. See Spot run????? 

My weekly stats from Grammarly

Now, how crazy was that post!!!  I've got loads to get done again today, but it's going to be a bit more relaxed. I see I got a few corrections to make on that pattern I wrote and I should start on the next one. I see that it's forecast to rain today so that will keep me inside, nose to the grindstone. Oh my - am I dating myself when I say stuff like that? Probably!!!

Don't forget to read QUILTsocial today. There are some interesting things happening in the world of machine quilting on a machine embroidered wall hanging. But it all works out in the end.

Have a super day!!!!


Ciao!!!