Quilting finished

Current COVID related deaths: 629,315

COVID deaths yesterday: 629,064

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My honey was up and out the door before 8 AM on Saturday (7/31) and I was already at my computer, working on my blog :~). Getting it out took a couple of hours….as I hadn’t posted in 3 days!!! But finally it was done and I headed back to my customer quilt. I knew I needed to work on it because it has been hanging over my head for almost a week now. And I’ve decided on something else I am going to do with customer quilts in the future. When someone is coming over for quilt top drop-off, we meet in the kitchen to fill out the intake form and pick a quilting pattern and thread color. I’m going to make sure my kitchen island is completely empty…and if the quilt has borders, I’m going to measure the inside and outside edge of the quilt after I put it on the island. If there is too much ‘float’ in the borders, I’m not going to accept it. I am more than willing to help my customers achieve a well made quilt if they are interested, but if they are not, I am not going to put myself through the stress of quilting it. I think that’s fair….I hope my customers do too! It’s a hard line to walk because I don’t like to give advice when someone has not asked me….I think it’s presumptuous to basically start telling someone what is wrong with their quilt. I’ve tried to be very gentle in the past when people have come to pick up their quilts…and it has been well received…but it is still hard. If I do it on intake, this way everyone will know up front what’s going on, and if a customer wants me to do their quilt…and if there are problems…this will give them a chance to correct them, or go to another long armmer. I talked a little about it with Loree and Robin on Thursday (they are both long armmers) and we all commiserated over wavy borders….our own or others….it doesn’t matter. All quilts are more wavy at the bottom than the top….it’s just the nature of long arm loading and how as you quilt, the quilt draws in at the top and already creates a bit of fullness as you move down the quilt.

It was finally finished by 3 PM. I feel badly that the borders on this quilt are so bad….my customer put together lots of different fabrics….that I don’t think I would have put together….and the quilt top is truly gorgeous….I just wish I could have appreciated it more as I was quilting it. At least it was completed with all of the fullness worked in and no pleats.

Michael and I got cleaned up before dinner and headed out to 521 BBQ. We haven’t been there in AGES and Michael was craving some ribs. We were seated, and our waiter came over and said ‘’just have to let you know, we’re out of ribs’’!! Michael threw his menu up in the air and we told them we’d be back later in the week and we left. I headed to the grocery store to pick up buttermilk, a large main dish salad and ginger ale, while Michael headed to RED BOWL and got a tempura appetizer. We ate the tempura dinner at home and finished off watching the last episode of NORTHERN EXPOSURE and all of the deleted scenes for our date night.

*** At my age, rolling out of bed in the morning is the easy part. Getting back up off the floor is a whole other story. ***