Musings of My Mind
Observations of the world around me and as I see it.
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April 3, 2016

L-O-N-G Month and a Half!

Yes, it has!  I've spent the last month and a half (plus!) working on this quilt!  (See below)  The reason that quilter's charge so much for quilts is because of quilts like the one below.  It has 64 blocks, 32 of each block and then, of course, a pieced border, too.  I've never pieced a border like this before-- it had 4-patch blocks in it!


This quilt took approximately 510 hours to sew: that's 5 hours a day 6 days per week times approximately 17 weeks.  At my "Hourly Rate" for seamstress work, NO ONE COULD AFFORD THIS QUILT!!  The good news is that this isn't going to be sold to anyone.  The bad news?  Well, as you can see, this is on my long arm and if I've made a mistake in the quilt at this point (a) it would be more obvious because of the pattern for the piecing and (b) it would be too late.  Then you would fall back to the Amish world in which "No one is perfect besides God so that's why there's a deliberate mistake in it." Works for me!

I've also been working on an Avengers-themed quilt for my 42 year old nephew-- Yup, I believe he's 42 but what little boy ever really grows up?!?  I don't have pictures on that but once it is on the long arm, I'll quilt it and offer up a bunch of photos as well as the photos of when it and the above quilt is finished.

Sometimes our "work" is tedious but we sure enjoy it a lot, don't we?

By the way, the winner of our discount certificate for Liking and Sharing us on Facebook is Linda P!!  It took awhile to get a quantity of entrants on Facebook before I could pull the name out of the hat but we got there!  Congratulations, Linda-- you are the proud winner of a 10% discount on your next quilting job from me!!  Can't wait to see what it will be!!  (Maybe we'll have pictures?)

Until next time-- take care!
Marcia


February 7, 2016

Another SuperBowl, eh?  Yeah, I don't pay much attention to it either.  Tomorrow, I'll be able to get back to the busy-ness of sewing.  I've been taking care of my husband who has had a cold and flu over the course of the past week.  Why can't men call their doctors?  My husband over-coughed or perhaps, when he vomited, he heaved too hard and as a result, he'd "Ow" every time he coughed after that time.  <Sigh>  Yes, it has been a long week.

Anyway, I haven't felt like I could go to my sewing area when he was so sick so, instead, I puttered around the upper parts of the house.  I did get a little sewing done in the early part of the week:


This is part of the purple/green batik king-sized quilt that I've been working on for what seems (already) like a month!  There are only a quarter of the blocks completed but I'm still plugging away!

Do you have those kinds of quilts?  The kind that seem to go on forever?  Yup!  We sure love it, don't we?  Sometimes it seems like we choose the most complicated pattern and then are surprised when its complicated (like this one)!

Ah, well-- tomorrow I get to go "back to work" as my husband is off to his job.  There are more blocks to be made up for this gorgeous quilt!

January 21, 2016

We start this week with a cancellation:  Class on Saturday is cancelled due to snow!  I like snow but not when it does this to our schedule!  All registration fees will be held until we can reschedule this class-- Yeesh!!  I should know better than to try to schedule anything major during January and February!

Beside that, my biggest news is that my husband has completed the quilt ladder I've been trying to get him to build for what seems like several years!  See below-- I love it!  I've got four rungs that are empty and then I could start doubling the quilts up, too!  LOTS of room!



I've been sewing and crafting up a storm around here lately!  I recently saw some "jewel" storage boxes at a craft fair and I'm trying my hand at making my own-- should be interesting!  (It is definitely messy!!)

I found out that there is no way for Facebook to tell me when you have hit "Like" or "Share" so, unfortunately, if you do so, please send me an email at [email protected] to let me know and your name will go in the hat for the drawing on the gift certificate at the end of the month!

January 8, 2016

Well, a week has passed and things have really been moving along!  I've spent the majority of time cutting out two quilts: a king-sized quilt in batiks of purple and green (mostly purple but there's green in them-thar purple batiks!) and a large queen-sized t-shirt quilt for my nephew.  I should point out that my nephew is about to be 41 and I love the fact that I am making a t-shirt quilt from his (mostly) Avengers t-shirts!  How fun is that?!?  I'm doing some creative borders around the t-shirts, which is resulting in creative borders around the quilt (for the first border-- there will be three, all together).

I should be finished with cutting out all of those two quilts tomorrow and then I'll start on sewing down the binding on the hand-tied antique quilt.  This quilt top was purchased several years ago in Old Bowie (an annex of the original city of Bowie) antique store.  Its an ugly quilt and was priced to match but at least it will be loved from now on!

So, what have you been up to this week?  I've heard from a couple of you about some projects that you're working on which is great-- keep the feedback coming! 

Like Marcia's Makings on Facebook, too-- I'll have a gift certificate for a special discount on quilting services drawn randomly at the end of the month from the names that sign up between now and the end of the month.  (If you "Share" and "Like" on Facebook, I'll put your name in the hat twice!)

Keep in touch and see you soon!

January 2, 2016

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Yep, that makes perfect sense to me!  And here we go again.  I've launched my website for a second time and I'm adding my "Musings" page as part of a blog there.  We'll see how it goes as I sometimes blur the lines between sewing and living.  Maybe there shouldn't be any lines?

Suburbia

So I live in suburbia, aka, a subdivision.  A subdivision is like an apartment complex except that you don't HAVE to talk to your neighbors if you don't want to and, occasionally, if they have a party, you may get invited before you have to call the police (because there is no security service that will handle it like at an apartment complex) to control the noise.

This is why I sew in the basement of our house.  I have approximately 800 square feet for my fabric and sewing areas with my longarm machine (Is "longarm" one word or two?  Everyone writes it differently!) in what used to be the "Library" of our home (everyone else in the subdivision that has this model of house calls that room the "formal living room" but we aren't that formal which is good because there is no room for formality in that room!).  It is on the main floor of our house and it is nice to come out of the bowels of sewingdom to see the sunshine and quilt a piece or two.  (Yes, there's always a back-up of my personal quilts-- customers ALWAYS come first!)  If I longarm, I do it during the day, any day of the week and I'm certain that my neighbors and those who walk or drive by are confused by the HUGE frame they see with a white . . . wait-- what is that?  For the record, I have a 12' frame (I believe it is actually 13' but that's not actually measured-- all of the paperwork claims that it is a true 12' frame) for my 24" Fusion from HandiQuilter.  I have the ProStitcher on it which is a computerized system that gives you GORGEOUS designs to have stitched on your quilt-- I have yet to find one quilt that came off my machine that I disliked!  It is easy to find the right design to go with the theme of a quilt-- typically, I get a feel for the quilt while I'm piecing it (in the case of a customer's quilt, I talk with them at length to determine what they may have thought about while they were piecing the quilt, who it is for, if there is a special occasion, etc.) and I just go from there.  HandiQuilter has over 500 designs plus, I've got another 500+/- that I've purchased-- oh, and did I mention that there are digitizers who sell EVERYTHING you could ever want in a design?  Its amazing what is available for quilting!

But, as usual, I digress!

I live in suburban location of Bowie, Maryland, nearer to the Greenbelt, Maryland side of the world.  We've lived in our house since 2003 after moving to Bowie the year before because of my day job.  Unfortunately, in the early part of 2002 my husband was laid off from his job in Silicon Valley (thank you, dot Bomb!) so that made the move to Maryland a whole lot easier.  After renting for a year, we went house-hunting and found this house and we love it!

So yesterday was the big re-launch of my business which can mean anything from quilt design to quilting to creating a special quilt for you and/or designing and building a garment for that special occasion.  There will be more to come (like about the specials that I'll have periodically and contests-- Yes, CONTESTS!) so stay tuned and spread the word!!



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