Unpacking and Preparing to Finish an Heirloom Quilt

At the top of my New Year's Resolution list is finishing my mother's Candlewicking Hearts and Flowers Quilt that is about three fourths done. I have completed three quilts as a warm-up exercise to prepare me for this project. It is all hand-stitched and I plan to complete it in the same way it was started.

My mother's last and most beautiful Hearts and Flowers
Candlewicking Quilt in pieces. She completed the remaining
blocks and the short sashings to go between them and
also pictured here are the fabrics, ribbon and lace to
finish the entire quilt, God-willing.

Mom cut no corners when it came to planning and executing
this quilt. It is all hand-embroidered using candle-wicking
thread and the sashings have all been pieced and embellished
with ribbon and lace. It is no less than exquisite! 

I realized after she died that I either forgot to ask her about her plans for this quilt, or simply forgot what she said, though I quickly offered to complete it for her as she was physically declining and struggling to complete it. I knew that the pattern was original, though some of the candle-wicking blocks came from a magazine, that I can't seem to find now, though she had a pulled out the attached pattern from the same magazine that has some of the same blocks detailed in about one-fourth of the size of her sixteen fifteen and one half inches blocks. The blocks have all been completed and she has also completed the short sashing strips that go between each block of the remaining row that needs to be jointed together, with, the long sashing strips on either side that have not been cut or sewn yet. The other three rows of blocks have all been stitched together.

She has made it using a quilt-as-you-go technique. This means that she sewed and quilted each section of the quilt, and then sewed each pre-quilted piece by seaming the top first, then the batting and then the backing to join the pieces together. It is a very labor intensive way to quilt a quilt, but works well if quilting the entire quilt would be too cumbersome to do without a quilting frame.

Each sashing is created with one center
strip of unbleached muslin, bordered with
a strip of each calico print on either side,
embellished with ribbon and lace.

Each sashing strip has eighteen rows of hand-stitching
in order to make it, embellish it with ribbon and lace,
quilt the strip and then sew it to the adjoining
section of the quilt and then quilt next to the adjoining seams.

Each sashing strip has eighteen rows of hand-stitching in order to make it, embellish it with ribbon and lace, quilt the strip and then attach it to the adjoining section of the quilt as described above, and then quilt next to the adjoining seams.

Some of the joining seams on the back side have not been done in her nicest of stitches. As I said she was beginning to deteriorate physically by the time she got the quilt to this point and so I shall re-do any hand-stitched seams where her stitches became too big and are less secure or stitched in such a way as to create puckers and I will do this before I join the last row of blocks with their sashing strips.

I hope to add a final row of sashing horizontally across the top and bottom of this quilt as well that will finish off all sides of this quilt and it appears that there are just enough materials to do that, though measuring twice and cutting once is my rule of thumb! Sometimes sampler quilts like this can have final borders around the entire quilt, but I think such borders may be too much with all the embellishment she has added to the sashings?

If anyone has other ideas regarding how this quilt should be finished, I would be open to hearing about them. At the time I promised to finish this quilt, I was more focused on taking care of her, as well as my own family! Any caretaker will appreciate the exhaustion that goes with accompanying a precious family member to their death. It is an emotional and physical strain losing someone so dear and to be certain, more thought was given to her than to actually  finishing her beautiful quilt.

I promised her that I would finish it and I will, though it is only the beginning of finishing many other quilts started long ago. I am now keeping all my thoughts and plans for my quilts in plastic sleeves that I keep with each quilt. This idea is not original to me. I once went to a quilter's estate sale and joked that I was going to cut all my materials up before I die, and one of the people putting on the estate sale didn't see the humor in my comment. She added rather curtly, "then keep the pieces all together with directions included to make it easier for those that will follow and finish your quilts". As with many quilters, there may be too many quilts to finish in my lifetime? I am praying that Mom will send her spirit to guide me through the finishing of her most beautiful quilt!

It is bizarre, but to keep me attentive to this work, I have added several other quilt tops to be done in a block by block fashion, incrementally throughout this year. With having a variety of projects and sewing tasks, I shouldn't suffer from the usual tediousness that I experience finishing quilts. I am not sure that other quilters feel as I do, but starting quilts is easier than finishing them for me. Moving from quilt to quilt, should help maintain my interest in all of them. I prefer variety when I sew, as I don't have the patience that my mom had to stick to only one project at at time! I reward my persistence in sticking to finishing a quilt by having several other less challenging projects going at a time. Did I mention that I am a fabricaholic?!

Nine patch/ Nine patch quilts make easy, fun and colorful
scrap quilts. It is fun to see them grow and each is unique!
The more I make the more individual quilts that I can make.
Quilting them on my quilting machine should be fast and easy.

Another scrap quilt of appliqued double hearts give me
opportunity of playing with  fabric. This quilt will be
primitive, colorful, and provide much hand-applique practice!

This Civil War Sampler quilt will provide me with much
experience to perfect my machine piecing skills, and adding
two blocks of fifty different patterns a week will produce
enough blocks for one or more quilts in a year. All are done
using different red, blue and cream Civil War period
reproduction fabrics.

New Quilts, and Finishing UFO's in 2018

At the Vermont Quilt Festival last summer, I met a quilter who shared with me how she works on quilts. It was affirming and reassuring to know that I am not the only person who likes to work on multiple projects at a time. She is always thinking of new creations and brings them to fruition by working on many in different stages of completion.  This way she is always planning something fresh and new, cutting it out, sewing patchwork or appliquing their tops and then quilting them, after sandwiching the top and backing with batting in the middle.

It is certainly a boredom buster, and way to avoid the tediousness of pushing ahead on one project at a time. She also related that some quilts are NOT to be finished as with some, she has learned all that she wants to learn, and spending time finishing them will not be worthy of her time! I am only into the third week of the new year and I see my quilt blocks growing. I have contracted with myself to do two blocks each week  on my Civil War quilts, and two more appliqued heart blocks and a pair of strips for the nine patch quilt which usually works out to create about ten blocks when each pair of strips is cut and re-sewn together.

The first blocks to two Civil War Quilt tops using Barbara
Brackman's Civil War Sampler book. Samplers are fun as
the same block made from different materials creates
totally different appearing blocks. 

Pairs of strips sewn together to create nine patch blocks.

Nine patch blocks, with fussy-cut poinsettia blocks as well
as unbleached muslin blocks to create a nine patch/nine
patch Christmas quilt. I may create some lap-sized
ones as well as a bed-sized quilt. I do love reds and greens
and likely they will all be a bit different, but share some
similar patched blocks.

These appliqued double-heart quilt blocks will go together
to create a lovely simple scrap quilt. While plain, these blocks
will lend themselves to show off the quilting that will be used
to finish them.

This simple basic patchwork will make a lovely puffy
comforter for my niece. It will be hand-tied and is a
short-term project squeezed in between
the longer-term projects.

I have pulled out my mother's beautiful hand-made candle-wicking quilt that she left for me to complete. I have not unpacked it all yet, but look forward to studying her process and access what is completed and what is left to do before proceeding. I am under no illusion that completing this quilt will be quick. It is all hand-stitched and hand-quilted and will take a lot of time to complete it using these same techniques. I learned a long time ago that the hardest step in any project is to "start it" and I am about to do just that. Once I have studied it, it will simply be a case of taking each step in a methodical step-by-step approach and with persistence and perseverance, I can and will complete it!

A Pandora's box filled with the most
beautiful of my mother's quilts.
Her own Hearts and Flowers Candle-
wicking Quilt, to be completed by,
gulp,....me!

It is all hand-embroidered using off-white candle-wicking
thread on unbleached muslin and trimmed in two contrasting
pink calico borders with lace. (See in picture below.) My
mother has then hand-quilted each block and border. It is
exquisite! She quilted it using a quilt-as-you-go technique.
It is one of the most beautiful quilts I have ever seen!

This is actually how she has done the sashings in between each
of  the embroidered blocks. She has one remaining row of
blocks and strips to be assembled and finished. I will then try
to figure out how it is to be finished off. It is to be a
king-sized quilt. I am trying to convince myself that I am up
to this challenge! I do hope my dear mother will prompt me
through this from her heavenly throne! It is indeed a heavenly
piece of art and will take much help from her to finish this!

I have practiced various methods of quilt-as-you-go techniques and feel as prepared as I am going to be to form a plan as to how to tackle it. My mother's work is so beautiful that I have been afraid to touch it. I will step right into the middle of her process. I feel sad that she is no longer here to consult. I clearly should have taken notes years ago when I first committed to finishing it for her. I will pray that she will support me from the other side and help guide me through finishing her most beautiful quilt. I figured that this is the most important work I have to complete. She might well be onry enough that she might lock heaven's gates and not let me in until it is finished, for that is the promise I made to her when she was struggling to finish it.

I am inspired to complete all my UFO (unfinished objects) quilts I have started, though not all this year. Don't ask how many! I feel more confident than I did a few years ago after practicing and finishing three quilts in the past couple of years. My last was a nine patch/nine patch reversible memory quilt for a friend that was inspired by receiving a box of fabrics, vintage hand-embroidered quilt blocks and hand-made infant clothing that had belonged to my friend's mother. My friend lost both her sister and her mother in a very short period of time, along with her two little lap dogs, so all were remembered in this quilt's dedication on the backside.

A simple nine patch/nine patch memory quilt for my friend
made out of the materials she sent to me that had belonged
to her mother. It is both machine quilted and hand tied.

There were enough 9 patch blocks to create a second quilt that I put together with mauve colored fabric making it's appearance look totally different. I quilted them using different styles of machine quilting. The memory quilt is both tied as well as machine quilted leaving me less seams on the back-side of the quilt, which became my clear checkered blue sky "canvas" for the appliqued memorial to her mother and sister. It arrived in time for Christmas and before the end of 2017 (in the nick of time, to not have to redo the date on the quilt).

The backing was tied on so as to give me a clear blue-checked
sky "canvas"  for this hand-appliqued clothes-line scene.
The items on the clothes-line were made by my friend's
mother. They were infant clothing items for her and her sister
and nursery rhyme quilt blocks that I stitched together to
make a small crib quilt). The border on the bottom is to be
green grass and on the top, middle and bottom, I have
appliqued a few song birds and butterflies to add
to its sweetness.

This dedication mini-quilt hangs on the bottom clothes-line.
It includes the dedication heart, all hand-embroidered,
surrounded by pictures of her mother, sister and little
lap dogs all printed on fabric and then bordered on the
top and bottom with symbols of her mother's
hospitality and the sweetness of the little neighborhood
 where we were raised. Her mother and sister were
sewers and quilters and the sweetest of women and so I
couldn't make this quilt appear too sweet!

I loved this vintage hand-embroidered quilt block
sewn by my friend's mother.

I have seen many vintage nursery rhyme embroidered
blocks but never as sweet as these!

When my husband photo'd these quilts, he assured me that the clutter on our dressers would be easily photo-shopped out of the pictures, but cropping them was not so easy, and so, as with everything else in my life, it is a case of learn the hard way what-to-do and not-to-do when photographing my quilts. So the pictures of my friend's memory quilt front and backside, and its sister quilt are complete with our home-made clutter on our dressers. It should comfort those of you that are like me who have to focus on either quilting or cleaning and never at the same time!

This is the sister quilt made from the rest of the nine patch
blocks. It is fitting that it is on our bed. Such good memories
of by gone years with my silly friend, Linda Pollard!

I take my life one day at a time and each is filled with quilting, which is my version of a perfect retirement. My quilts are lessons of love and patience. I will complete and start many more in my, God-willing, many remaining years!

New Years--How Cold It Is, but Warm Inside!

I have been joking about moving to Florida, and no more. They are getting snow too? California looks better as the fires get more contained, though now they are experiencing flooding and mudslides! I may complain of being cold, but I will take our weather in Vermont over that in our favorite vacation spots on the New Hampshire coast! We are only cold and not flooded with the icy sea water!! My sympathy to all of you experiencing extreme weather, for as my husband says, we are simply having winter here!

I made New Year's resolutions and they sound easy enough and perhaps even realistic until I face them in the middle of a cold spell with snow on the roads and no chance for getting out without looking like I just gained a hundred pounds with all the layers I have to wear to stay warm! I am worse than Ralphie's brother in his snow suit in A Christmas Story!

But on the positive side, this weather is conducive to sewing quilts, and have I ever bit off a lot for this next year!! They can't get done fast enough, as I dream of them stacked up on our bed to ward off such winter chills!!

Come take a peak at what I have in store for 2018!

A Civil War Sampler by Barbara Brackman

Great fabric selections for a Civil War Quilt or what?!

I plan to sew two of the same patterned blocks using different
fabrics each week making enough for one or two quilt tops in
a year? I will get the experience of sewing different patterns
each week, starting with the easy ones and progressing to
more difficult, as outline in Barbara Brackman's book,
CivilWar Sampler!

A simple 9 patch/9 patch quilt with poinsettia and unbleached
muslin blocks and 9 patch blocks using these prints.

I can't resist appliqued hearts! I plan to do
two blocks a week for a year to make one
or two double appliqued heart quilt tops.

My process is shown in this picture (right to left). I machine
stitch stabilizer to each heart and then trim the stabilizer and
turn them inside out so edges are turned under and then
hand-stitch to different neutral colored blocks.

All my projects are designed to practice skills of different sorts of piecing as well as other stages of quilt making that will be pictured in my following blogs! 2018 will be an intense year of quilt making! Fun, or what?Perhaps some of you might consider joining me in creating one of these quilt tops yourself? Stay tuned! I am back to blogging and sharing my new ventures!

Also check out my craft work in my Etsy shop. I have recently listed many of this year's items and reduced many of my prices. You might find the deals you have been waiting for?!

Happy-Happy New Year! May you all be blessed with a good and healthy 2018!

Christmas--How sweet it is!

Christmas, how sweet it is!

The coming of God's son, Jesus,

Emmanuel, God with us.

Does it get any better than this?
A divine presence,

A sweetness in a stressful world.

A light in darkness. Hope, love and peace,
A palpable serenity.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to my readers! I'm back and there is more to come!

Sincerely, Jane McMillen at Little House, Castleton, Vermont! (the last picture is actually a picture of our neighbors across the street from us. We are having a White Christmas, the first in a few years!

Bedlam Farm Open-House Invitation

What happened to Jane McMillen and Little House Home Arts? They seem to have disappeared for many weeks. Their absence is easily explained:

Jane has been on a sew-a-thon, first finishing a quilt for a friend (the 9 patch/9 patch one started a very long time ago). Well, the dedication of this memory quilt is now finished, and only the border is left to do,  (picture forthcoming in a future blog), but is being post-poned for Jane to create pincushions for Jon Katz and Maria Wulf's  Bedlam Farm Open-House to be held October 7th and 8th. They are located on Route 22 heading south just before you get to Cambridge, New York. You can't miss the big signs in front of their home and country estate, advertising their open-house and belly dancers that will be performing on Saturday, the 7th. Jane plans to be there the afternoon of the 8th. No matter which date is best for you, do treat yourself to a great country fall event, and meet their fans along with their dogs, cats and farm animals and get in on the celebration and art show!*

Owls are the new pincushion for this season, big or small.

Here is a sneak peak of what has been created for this fun event. Jane has deemed it "the year of the owl"...something about gaining wisdom and sewing pincushions and felted wool items part of the year while she spends the other part of the year creating quilts, an art form that she is pursuing once again!

Jane has created her many other designer pincushions that she is famous for as well: various fruits and vegetables, chickens, candy corn, ice cream sundaes, flower pots and strawberry pots, penny rug, and two tones button pincushions as well as  button coin purses, and needle books. If you don't sew, it doesn't matter as these felted wool sculptures add much color to whatever space you want to decorate. They also make affordable and unusual gifts for discerning friends.

Once Jane gets started working with felted wool she cannot stop however, and so she has created all sorts of various items for Maria's art show as well as two other holiday sales in November and December! She hasn't stopped sewing in weeks...except for naps and snacks!! Her family hasn't seen much of her either.

I can't seem to stop creating felted wool items, simple but colorful!

Her tiny kitty has grown up suddenly and is going a bit bizerk trying to convince her to take a break to play with him...He may be a large cat now, but he is still a kitty at heart!

My Addie Rose is really Addie Roe and has grown to be a very big boy!

*Jane will be only one of the many artists featured at this event. See Maria Wulf's blog at http://www.fullmoonfiberart.com/events/ for more details about this event. Many artists, belly dancers, poetry readings, art demonstrations, as well as Jon's dog Red, herding their flock of sheep will be there to entertain all who come. Jon will share the details of sheep herding and also talk about their dogs and their ways of serving their community. Jon Katz is a New York Times Best Selling Author and their show will include some of his books and prints of his photos that you can  purchase and have autographed while you are there! Please feel free to stop by and take in this fun fall event!

He is my sewing buddy for sure and tries to get into the action quite literally!

What's in a Name

I took Addie Rose to the vet a  few weeks ago now and learned that our little girl kitty named after my grandmother is really a boy! I immediately questioned whether or not to change our kitty's name. I didn't want to cause identity issues for our kitty as he had just begun to respond to his name and yet neither did I want to create gender identity issues by giving him a girl's name while telling him what a good boy he is (as in A Boy Named Sue?!) We have had some laughs about all this, but clearly I have lots to learn about gender and personality traits!

What's in a name? I believe that Shakespeare answered this question in his famous play, Romeo and Juliet* . In Juliet's soliloquy she asks herself the same question after finding out that Romeo, the young boy she had just met and fallen in love with belonged to the family of her family's arch rival. And then she answers, "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." And so it is with our "Addie Rose", now "Mr. Addie Roe". We had been taken with this kitty from the time we met him and just because he wasn't a girl, would that change our affection for him? 

Not ever! Nonetheless it was a shock to find out that our  pretty little kitty was not a girl kitty at all! He has very long hair which helped to hide his sex. I have since learned that when kitties are very young it is very hard to tell the difference and I hadn't bothered to double check since we got him through a vet's office and all the experts claimed he was a she?

Our pretty little "girl kitty"?  or NOT!

I had named our kitty after my grandmother, Rose Addie and simply reversed the order and at the time we first met her, we thought she had a perfect name for that pretty little face. It was an affectionate kitty, and very sweet, albeit a rather un-shy kitty who quickly adopted us. I am hoping that he wasn't figuring "there is a sucker born every minute" and had us pegged as he worked hard to charm us!! He did just that, though we were set on adopting a female and not a male kitten. We had heard that males spray and mark their territory and wanted to avoid that!

My partner in all that I do!

My grandmother,  Rose "Addie" Kiechel had been a Nebraska pioneer woman, named with the same initials as her older brother who died in early childhood.  He had been Robert Albert and so her initials, my great grandmother decided, needed to be R.A. as well.  My grandmother was never fond of her name, but I was, though at the time I named my children, I hadn't realized how much. "Addie" to me is a very strong name and I like strong names.

My grandmother was a strong person, though when I knew her, she was a quiet grandmother, who temporarily resided with her many children. She would come to stay with us for a couple of months at a time. She was a sweet grandmother who would sit quietly within our house and write in her diary every day. Unlike my diaries that are filled with all the things I wasn't allowed to say, her diaries became factual logs of all things good about her children and their families and were as sweet as she was.  She would note the good things of the day and many of them read like the infamous "Little House" books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. She had nine children, one of which died in utero. She had her babies at home and most were assisted into the world by her mother, Alvina, who was called "Viney" by those closest to her. She was another strong pioneer woman.

We still confuse our pronouns where Addie is concerned, and I laughingly have spoken about our little girl kitty who turned into a boy, but my husband reminds me that this is only a reality in my brain, as our kitty has always been a boy and he is turning out to be an alpha male at that! I now talk about what a handsome kitty he is, though I had truly thought him beautiful before! I also am trying to reinforce his sexual identity by telling him that he is a good boy. We will have him neutered when he is old enough, just as we would have had a female kitty spayed.

What happened to this sweet baby with the big paws?!!

We were so insistent about having a female kitty but apparently  the facts are different than what we thought. The truth is that all cats, when threatened may mark their territory and hopefully neutering our cat will decrease any such tendencies. He is both athletic as well as affectionate and  is growing like a weed, and, knock on wood, so far has been a very easy kitty to teach and train. He has a special scratching box and has taken to it and so far has left my curtains and furniture alone, though I do note that he is getting more bold and masterful about leaping and jumping every day. He loves his ever-growing big paws and flexes his claws just to scare me and sometimes forgets that our legs are not trees, as he tries to climb them and he loves to "get wild" about his play and is quite the acrobat! He is a keeper, no matter that he isn't a she!

As a baby, Addie was fearless in facing off with our dog, Cassie!

Check the size difference! Oh my!!

Addie, come to find out, is also a boy's name and so no problem there and I announced this news to my husband by adding "Mr. Addie Rose" to his birthday card the same day as the vet appointment that deemed it so.

I am thinking that perhaps it should be "Mr. Addie Roe" instead of Rose.  Roe means deer and this kitty is truly "a dear" to me (play on words intended). I am still adjusting to our sweet little baby girl kitty being a bold a daring and very athletic male kitten, and from what we have read about his possible breed, he should grow much bigger than the female counterpart. Nebelung (Russian gray long-haired) male cats could become as big as sixteen pounds. I just met an eight week old Bernese Mountain pup whose big paws were smaller than Addie's and they were told that he would likely reach at least one hundred pounds! I do hope that Addie won't be that size, but as cats go, I think Addie may well be a very large full grown male kitty.

"Sooooo Big and my dog sister's,Cassie's bed is just right! "I can stretch out"!!

"What's in a name?... That which we call a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet." While I still think we have a sweet kitty, albeit, one that is more confident and bold than what I had thought. He isn't afraid to chase our 65 pound lab/coon-hound dog out of her bed when he wants a bigger bed to sleep in...and more than once I have stopped to ask myself who is getting trained?... Is our Addie "getting trained" or is he training us and in this case, dog sister as well?

The little bed on the right is mine? Really? Time for a bigger bed and to
trade my baby Kong with the dog's that is just my size!

*Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/williamsha125207.html

Dream Big

I have loved quilts every since I was a young woman. I even worked in Bonnie Lehman's Quilts and Other Comforts store in Colorado when my health necessitated that I step out of my chosen career of nursing for a time as I wasn't tolerating rotating shift work. I had taken a quilting class at Bonnie's Store before she and her daughter started their quilting magazine, Quilter's Newsletter. Her quilt shop was a very spacious and well-filled store and her daughter had a special office there to design quilt patterns that they sold through their catalog and later in their magazines. That was in the 70's, a good many years ago now. I returned to my career(s) but all the while I still dreamed of sewing and quilting while I worked as both a special education teacher and as a nurse to help support my family! How far my dreams have carried me!

My next-to-new Simply Sixteen Quilting Machine with The Little Foot frame.

My sewing was merely a side-line hobby,  though my real talents were not so much in nursing or teaching but rather in art and home arts. My dad was a practical man and had all of us kids go to college! His choices became my alternatives and included becoming a secretary, teacher or a nurse and somehow I got "programmed into becoming a nurse". I became a Candy Stripe Volunteer first so I could have a sneak peek into the medical world and then off I went to college at the University of Colorado's School of Nursing.

I was anything but a "natural nurse", unless you count "the art of hand-holding" when patients needed a firm hand to grab when hurt or scared! I went onto became a special education teacher, as I had already mastered the art of learning skills and knowledge that were difficult and had to be learned incrementally in tiny steps. My dad taught me that you don't have to be smart, you only have to work hard, and from this I gathered that I wasn't smart and had better work hard! But when you work hard and still aren't "fitting your round peg into a square hole", I came to realize that neither of my careers, were a good fit, especially with my failing health!

Art, my father taught me, was important in making a house a home, but until I married rich, I would need a career like nursing to support myself. I did crafts and held craft shows but it was only a side-line-fun-thing-to-do, more than it was financially lucrative. It did feed my soul and supported my dreams of a nice home and family, and all the usual sorts of things that women wanted in my day, when high tech careers for women weren't so prolific. I never did marry rich, and so I worked to help support my family for a very long time.

Nursing wasn't the same as it is today. It was practical knowledge and skills that would serve me well in what I envisioned women were to be: housewives, mothers, supporters and comforters. Little did I know then that it would lead me into making actual comforters and quilts and other domestic arts to make a creative sort of home with comfort to spare. It would help me take care of myself and my family, though instead of applying bandaids to superficial wounds, I would look for concussions and serious diseases! I am now back to my love of designing and creating pretty and useful home arts, and my nursing is used strictly to take care of myself and my family.

We moved to Vermont when our kids were little.  My husband was seeking better employment and I had become a special education teacher and I figured, I could easily transfer my work to Vermont though I didn't know then, that my career aspirations had peaked and were soon to take a turn for the worse. Vermont seemed to be leading the nation in limiting special ed services and competing with younger and more energetic educators pushed me into doing a refresher course in nursing so I could return to office nursing instead. I tied fishing leaders on the side when work was minimal but one thing remained constant...my dreams of being creative and wanting to do it full time.

A magnetic strip attachment makes it so I can stitch
straight lines up and down and horizontal.

It wasn't long after our move that I learned about the The Vermont Quilt Festival...the greatest quilt show in the northeast. It was always in June and for a few years we drove to Norwich, Vermont to see it. The show was not in air conditioned buildings and no matter how hot and humid the weather, I would see all there was to see! My husband took me every year and our daughters eventually joined us. We were delighted when the guild relocated their show to the convention center in Colchester, Vermont where air-conditioning made the shows easier and more comfortable!

Simply attach your quilt with special clamps to attach it to
The Little Foot five foot frame, like you would a quilting hoop.

Attending The Vermont Quilt Festival nurtured my big dreams of creating crafts and quilting. Dreams, I learned, come first and their fulfillment later. When nursing became too much for me physically, I put together a studio in my basement and organized my collection of unfinished projects, materials, notions and machines, started a blog and created designer pincushions. I gathered with other artists for craft shows and little by little, Little House became a reality. I continued to dream big and imagined my little house as a home filled with sewing stations and studio space for creating traditional home arts!

Participating in local craft markets wasn't just about creating, selling and profitting, though that has helped my collection of materials and patterns grow, but it has brought me together with some delightfully creative people. Continuing to dream big has also brought me back to quilting and "magically and miraculously" transformed my life and my home.

Instead of scouting out new fabric, notions, books and patterns at the quilt show this year, I decided to try different longarm quilting machines. I didn't know when or how I would get one, but I thought refining my dream as to which sort I would want would be the first step. I hoped to one day afford a well-loved used machine and low and behold I found one so reasonably priced that my husband agreed that we needed to check it out at a quilt shop about forty minutes from our home. I thought I was wanting a long arm free motion table top quilting machine that I had tried at the quilt show. I called first to be sure that it was still available.

My husband was comparing prices between different machines available and realized sooner than I did that The HQ Simply Sixteen Machine seemed to offer more of what I was looking for in a longarm quilting machine at a similar price to The HQ Sweet Sixteen table model. The Simply Sixteen quilting machine is attached to a five foot frame so instead of moving the quilt,  the machine moves across the quilt. Despite its small size, its frame works much like an old-fashioned quilting hoop. Simple clamps attach the quilt to the frame, allowing you to quilt a large section and then  simply move the quilt  to a different location, reattach it to the frame and quilt another section.

Practicing some free motion designs with variegated quilting thread.

With an added magnetic bar, this machine will do straight line quilting, perpendicular or horizontal, but clamp your quilt at an angle and it offers straight line quilting done at an angle. It is a quilting machine designed to quilt any sized quilt, and like a home machine can use different sized quilting threads, providing you use the right sized needle. Its five-foot frame is designed to be a more convenient size to fit in smaller spaces than the large twelve foot quilting machines that are often featured. It even has a laser attachment that you can use to trace pantograph designs to be stitched where you want such designs.

The laser light will allow me to stitch pantograph designs like these.

The settings are simple and easy to learn.

It has two settings: manual or regulated. I knew that I wanted stitch regulation as that means that the stitch length is not according to the speed at which I sew but rather the setting as to how many stitches per inch, whether I stitch fast or slow. Stitch regulation will give me nice even stitches, despite being a beginner longarm quilter!

How much easier to guide the machine instead of the quilt. Big quilts are not easy to manipulate! The only catch in sewing on this machine is perhaps getting the tension set correctly which they claim isn't so difficult, though I think it an art that may take some time to perfect!

The owners of the shop delivered it to our house, set it up and then gave us all a lesson as to how to operate the machine. We learned that the tension setting is done by adjusting the tension on the bobbin case, which is something I had learned as I quilted on my home domestic machine, and the upper tension is set with a tension setting knob, like on regular home machines of old and all that I learned about adjusting tension when doing quilting with a walking foot is the same. Good stitches are to meet in the middle and not on the top or back of your quilt.

It will take some time to develop "the art of getting the correct tension as well as learning to do free motion designs", but the machine definitely makes it easier to accomplish! Each time I practice it gets easier and I am determined to practice as often as I can to become successful!

...but so much more to learn!

My machine was almost new and had only been gently used and came with nearly a full warranty. The previous owner had traded-up for a bigger quilting machine. I definitely don't have room for a twelve foot longarm quilting machine and so this one I think is quite perfect for me. I am still a hand quilter at heart and intimidate easily by big and complicated machines. This one seems relatively simple and how nice it will be to have a quilting machine that can be easily used to quilt my quilts, without trying to fit an entire quilt under the short arm of a domestic sewing machine.

I know that sometimes dreams take a long time to be realized, but it does seem that my big dream of a little house filled with machines of different sorts, materials, threads, and patterns has in fact come to be. I am truly amazed that little by little hard work and big dreams have paid off, though I give credit to God for all my fabrics, machines and notions for they have all come at the right time and at the right price! I am pinching myself and find it all hard to believe!

I must warn you that even when dreams come true, it is easy to feel some stress. Good stress is called eustress and the excitement of it can wear me out! I am still taking time to adjust to being the proud owner of such an extravagant addition to my Little House studio, like it is too good to be true! Surely there must be a catch..and I have learned that there is: it will take me some time before I master this different-sort-of-machine and stitching! I have been assured that it is simply a matter of practice, and it does seem that what little I have done so far, has confirmed this to be true.

I have pulled fabrics that are not ear-marked for special projects and or quilts and will make many "quilt sandwiches" to practice quilting. We are going to call them "cat and dog quilts", not unlike moving quilts that will provide some comfort to our animals and or stored delicate objects. Their purpose is to help me learn to adjust the thread tension, steer the needle with a handle bar and and use the control buttons until they become automatic and then onto my bucket list of quilt tops to quilt! It is a rather meditative art that requires full concentration. Time passes quickly and for now I am content with learning and having fun with it as I practice and continue to create my pincushions and fleece socks for this coming craft season's sales.

Once again I have learned that God is not to be limited. Dreaming Big is what I did and God has indeed blessed me with all that I need to be a successful machine quilter! I am pleased and grateful!

(My machine was purchased at Adirondack Quilts, a Handi Quilter and Pfaff official retail shop in South Glens Falls, NY,  owned by Bill and Shannon Duell (www.AdirondackQuilts.com). They offer a wide variety of sewing and quilting machines, some that are well-loved and gently used, like mine, making their prices even more affordable! They also offer accessories, notions, quilting fabrics and threads, along with classes. They personally delivered my machine, set it up and offered us instruction. Bill comes with "hand-holding support" for people like myself that are nervous about doing good machine work and freely offers his card with his home phone number and his sincere message to call him BEFORE I get frustrated! Service doesn't come better than this!)