Busy Day!

I menitoned in an earlier post my challenges with my Longarm. I also mentioned it in a post for one of the groups I belong to, and got a wonderful offer from an experienced longarmer, and a neighbor! She doesn't live in the neighborhood per se, but about 5 minutes away. At any rate, her offer was to come over and give me a little remediation! Of course I accepted!!! She came over yesterday and guess what----I was threading my machine all wrong. Now before you fall over with laughter, mind you, I have been following closely the instructions in the manuels. The problem is I have a Gammill Premier and most of the instructions are geared toward the larger machines. In addition, I sorta improvished in my quest to figure out what was wrong-at any rate, once we got it threaded correctly, she taught me a couple of her "secrets of success", I was on my way. Since her visit I have quilted two baby quilts and am 50% finished with the Nine Patch and haven't had one broken thread!!! I have also found that my machine likes Gutterman serger thread and Coats/Clark in the bobbin. With this combination the stitches on the back look as good as the stitches on the front! I am one "happy camper".

Last night my Anti-clorox stuff came from Dhrama and in addition, I went to the pet store and got the chlorine removal. I "practiced" discharging with some stencils and some stamps. The black Kona discharged really well---the result is almost metallic in color -- I really like it. I also had some dark green that looked like Kona, but clearly wasn't---it didn't discharge at all! Tomorrow or this week-end, I will dye more and discharge some more. I used dishwasher gel as my "discharge" and it worked great. Hopefully the "anti" stuff worked---there really is no way to tell. I really liked working with the stencils best but I have a lot of stamps so hopefully I will get better with practice.





(I don't know why the pictures are turned this way but hopefully you get the idea---the first picture are stencils, the second are stamps.

Now to answer some questions: Zlaty, my mystery quilt will be very scrappy---I am only using one type of fabric consistenly---a red. The other colors (in different fabrics and hues) are black, beige/cream, green and gold. I got the magazine and am now putting the blocks together and I am liking my combination. I love scrappy quilts---in fact in all the years I have been quilting I have only made 2 planned color quilts.

My Disappearing Nine Patch is also very, very scrappy! It is truly a "utility" quilt, the back is old fashioned ticking. I was a little worried about quilting through the back since it has a very "stiff" hand, like polished cotton, but it is quilting pretty good! This is a picture of it on the frame. When I finish I will post a better




Hugs!