User's Groups are a girl's best friend

We had the best time ever at Sit n Sew yesterday. I even got stuff done which is a good thing. I don't have time this morning to show you what we all worked on - that's for tomorrow.

I was going to quilt that quilt yesterday when the group was here, but since the customer was actually in the room - I thought that I had better not - just in case something went wrong. The quilt was nicely pieced and laid flat as a pancake. The kind I love to quilt.

As soon as everyone left, I fired up the long arm so I could get it completed last night. There were 8 rows in total to quilt. The first one stitched beautifully. The second row same thing. But at the end of the second row, I got an error message. Hm - this is the same error message that I had received at the absolute end of a quilt last week. That was easy - I just shut the machine off since I was at the end of the quilt.

However, I was only ¼ finished this quilt and I had this error message which would NOT allow the pattern to fit into the next row. ACK!!!  What to do? What to do?  I started by saving the configuration for the quilt. Then I exited the quilting mode and went back into the configuration mode. Then back into quilting mode. Same issue. GRRR!!!!!   So I bit the bullet and shut the tablet down completely. Not without a wee bit of a prayer that I could get everything back in place.

Turned on the tablet and loaded the saved configuration. Hm - I have two choices when I reloaded the configuration. I chose one and it wasn't the right one since it looked like a mess on the screen. Back out and choose the second option. Oh my - back at the beginning of Row 1. Since all the rows were identical, it didn't really matter. Realigned the quilt and I was back in business. No EXTERNAL help needed on this and it took about 5 minutes to figure out how to move forward. There is zero panicking allowed and it's just logic and takes a lot of courage!

Once the quilt was done, I went to the User's Group on Facebook and I see that I'm not the only one with this error message. I now need to buy a Dock for the tablet instead of using the USB port. Apparently, that fixes the problem. I wonder why that error is showing up now???  Was there an upgrade and I didn't do it? Anyway - I'm going to buy the docking thing and install it.

The bottom line - I was able to get out of the jam by myself in a short period of time and the quilt looks amazing. And the User's Group told me how to avoid the problem in the future. That's when technology works in my favor!!!

Here's the quilt by the way.

Customer quilt - DONE

My other issue with the long arm isn't quite over yet. I did have a wee issue with that last week, however, I now know how to fix it. A quick jiggle of a wire and I was back in business. That was also a five-minute fix. Once I'm done the customer quilts, I'm going to jiggle a lot of those wires - I think I might know which one is the loose one and see how to fix it once and for all. Then I can reattach the covers to the machine!!!!

While I would prefer that these issues don't occur, I'm happy to know that I can get back up and running in a very short period of time. That's good enough for me at the moment.

I'm now down to four customer quilts to complete before the end of the year. And I loaded one of Audra's quilts last night - it's little so that shouldn't be a problem to finish off tonight.

And I'm making progress on the magazine quilt. I hope to finish piecing it tonight and it will be quilted and bound tomorrow. That's the plan!

The scrap basket is almost full - OK - so it's overflowing. I need to get another pet mat made and get this emptied.

Scrap basket needs to be emptied

I''m not sure how the topic came up yesterday - there are so many things that we chat about in a single day!  But the topic was jigsaw puzzles. I LOVE jigsaw puzzles and I have a ton of them - some I've done and some I haven't. I had been contemplating doing one during the holidays. Turns out that a lot of us like to do jigsaw puzzles. My intention is to make the puzzle and then - it's gone. Just like my novels.

I dug this one out and Ronda very nicely sorted the edge pieces. Well - not so nice. Come on - when you sort the edge pieces, you're supposed to lay out all the other pieces and put them face up!  I didn't' have time to do anything with it last night so it still looks this way.

A jigsaw puzzle getting ready to put together

I love this jigsaw puzzle brand, but I believe it's defunct now. Anyway - an interesting picture. Don't look too close!

The jigsaw puzzle box

On that note, I'm out of here. It's Monday sewing! I remember packing my bag with a new project two weeks ago but couldn't remember what it was. So I peeked this morning. Oh yes - it's one of my UFOs from 2017. That would be awesome if I can get it completed this year. I'm torn between getting my stuff done or getting the stuff done for others. Either way, I'll be happy!!!  I will NOT volunteer to do anything for anyone EVER AGAIN! I won't bore you with the list, but there's a pile of stuff here that doesn't belong to me, it's technically not customer stuff and well - it will get done. That's going to be a goal for 2019. Get all that stuff out of the house! I'm working on it!!!!

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!!