Quilting in the Mountains

In a previous post, I wrote about setting up my Gammill long arm machine in the unfinished basement of our mountains cabin.  I decided that I could not wait until it was finished to start quilting again.   I had some projects I needed to get finished.  So, I drove up by myself last Wednesday morning and started cleaning up the sawdust and dirt down there.  That pile of insulation, plywood, and metal screening just had to stay in their corner and be ignored.

My husband's shop vac was up there.  Now this is a truly awkward machine, undoubtedly designed by men for men.  You have to bend over to vacuum the floor, pulling that bulky barrel-like tank, and using a little slot-like nozzle to do a whole floor.  Not good, but I did not want to use my good vacuum cleaner down there.

 

After sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping the floor, I put some sheets under the machine to protect the parts of the quilts that might drag on the floor.

One of the biggest problems in the room is that there is no overhead light or even electricity.  I used a whole mess of extension cords and multi-outlet sockets for the machine, light, bobbin winder, and hydraulic lift.

I set up a card table for the bobbin winder and some supplies.

I spent some time cleaning and oiling the machine, and turned it on.  Voila!  It fired right up and worked just fine after months of neglect.

Here is the first quilt that I did in the new location.  It is a baby quilt to be given on Saturday to a family member.  I don't think they read this blog, so it is okay to show it off.

I had some squares left over from another baby quilt.  For the center squares, I put two of each fabric so that the quilt becomes a sort of matching game to look for the same fabric.

The quilting is free-motion, with lots of swirls and ocean motifs to go with the baby's nursery.

This quilt is now completely finished and wrapped in its gift box.

I also quilted a small quilt for a friend of mine from the Whacky Ladies who has waited about eight months for her quilt.  She know I like to do artistic quilting, and let me have free rein on how to quilt all the monsters and ghouls.

The creatures were fused to the background, making a stiff surface to quilt on, but the area was too large to be left unquilted.  I went inside each one with some defining quilting stitches, and did echo quilting around them.

In the washings and borders, I did a straight-line meander in all directions.  The backgrounds behind the faces are quilted mostly with loops, but sometimes their names.

The thread broke quite often due to the heavy going in the fused areas.  And then there was this pieced backing!  All those seam intersections also made for a lot of thread breakage.

Well, it is done and Carolyn liked it!  On to the next one.

I got both quilts done in two days, and was able to enjoy the long Labor Day weekend with lots of family and friends.  In our little cabin we had six adult guests, five children under five, and four dogs!

Here are a few pics of the fun we had.

Family Weekend

This weekend we had a reprieve from winter weather, and beautiful spring temperatures.  Just in time for a gathering of my relatives for a memorial service for my aunt, Cornelia Willoughby Turner Loftus- better known as "Billie."

Billie died in October after several years of declining health.  She has been a part of my life as long as I can remember.  Her three children invited the family and close friends to a "Celebration of Life" in Cary, NC, on Saturday.  All five of my brothers and my sister attended, as well as many cousins from Alaska to Virginia to Florida.

Billie and Jeanne were my father's two younger sisters.  Only Jeanne is left now.  I was named for her.  We have a lot in common besides our names.  We are both tall, blond, quilting watercolorists!

My sister and two of my brothers stayed at my house.  We had a great visit.  Jeff and John are both accomplished guitar players and singers, and we had many hours of entertainment later Saturday night.

When I was waiting for my brother Jeff at the airport, I took some photos of the cherry trees in bloom.  Such a beautiful day with blue skies and warm temps.

And here is another welcome sign of spring...just look at our little granddaughter Charlotte!

After this little teaser of spring, we are supposed to have snow again tomorrow.  It does not seem possible!

Family Gathering

I spent most of the day yesterday in my jammies after the big family reunion at my house on Saturday. It was lots of work, but so great to see everyone. We ended up with a little over forty people. Here are the two youngest! Both little babies were very friendly and sweet among all the tall relatives.

So, how do you feed a sit-down turkey dinner to forty-something people? The men were in charge of the turkeys. My son Dave cracked me up as he played Massage Therapist while rubbing in the seasonings. "How's your job going?"

He brought his turkey cooker over, so we had twin fryers bubbling away in the driveway...

and two twin turkeys, fried to golden perfection!

The weather was cold and gray, but we had about fourteen kids running in and out of the house and around the yard. Here is my granddaughter Lily in her new fleece toboggan made by my friend Mary Nennstiel. Too cute!

I plan to do as little as possible today, and won't be cooking anything for days...unless heating up leftovers in the "nuker" counts as cooking. Maybe the new sewing machine will get out of the box this week!

Good Old Mountain Music

What a great time we had last weekend! A real family get-together to celebrate my nephew's wedding two weeks ago. The picture above shows me on the bottom row with my brother Chris, John, and John's son Ryan. The standing row is my brother Tim, sister Katy, brother Pat, and my Dad. Really fun to have all of the siblings there except one, who lives in Southern Florida.
I mentioned that I was busily working on several projects last week. One was ordering these two posters with pictures of the wedding. You can actually just upload your digital shots to Walgreens.com and order the poster. You can add as many photos that you like to the collage poster. They were a big hit, especially for those who were not at the actual wedding. The wreath above the posters is adorned with flame azalea that I picked on the mountain that morning.
In addition to picking the pig, there was another kind of picking going on...the pickin' and grinnin' type. My brothers always provide guitar/banjo music when they get together...but the younger generation took over at the party, with various ones taking turns on guitar or mandolin. Above are my son Dave on guitar, and friend Big Mike (6'9") handling the mandolin.

The other project I made last week was a DVD of all the wedding pictures, set to three different songs by the country group Alabama. If you have a computer with Windows XP, it probably has Windows Movie Maker. It is a rather simple procedure to import your pictures and drag them to the storyboard. Then you can adjust them to go along with the lyrics of your songs. I have very successfully used this for rehearsal dinners and other picture shows.

Finally, here is a parting shot of one of the hillsides on the mountain in the late afternoon sun. The trees have leafed out and are in many shades of greens and pastels. We often see deer playing on this hilly meadow.

Here are a few pictures of our weekend efforts to decorate our house for Christmas. (Yes, I found the little adaptor that lets me stick the memory card into the laptop.)

Yesterday, a cold front came through and brought very blustery winds, and all of the deer were laying on their sides when DSH got home. Oops, he had forgotten to nail down the anchors. They are now back upright doing the perpetual graze-thing on the same spot of lawn.

We are hosting a Christmas gathering for my family, the Turners, on December 15. It will include four of my five brothers, my sister, my father, two aunts, a cousin from Alaska, and all the assorted spouses, children, grandchildren, girlfriends, boyfriends, and this year even a foster child. I am thinking maybe fifty people? So, we try to make the place as festive as possible. We have been doing this every year for about the last eleven or twelve years, I think. We have a huge yard and an open floor plan that sort of accommodates the crowd. It's a lot of work, but we look forward to seeing everyone! And we always miss the missing brother and his family who live in southern Florida. They always make the trip for family weddings, and sometimes come to the North Carolina mountains for the summer, but we sure miss them .