Wowee!! Thank you so much to everyone that stopped by my blog for the Sew Mama, Sew Giveaway. I had well over 600 comments and many of you felt my blog was interesting enough to start following it. I really appreciate that. I used random.org to pick a winner on Friday, and have contacted them. The big winner was Leah, who had this to say:

“My most treasured quilting tool is my rotary cutter for sure. We are the best of friends, spending almost every day together. She has only nicked me once and I forgave her. After all, we are BFFs ”

Congratulations!! The awesome thing is that Leah was actually comment #1 on my blog!! Who says that being the first to comment means you won’t win? I will be sending your prize out tomorrow Leah!

So this weekend was Memorial Day weekend. My husband was in the military, so we always take time to remember those men that we knew that have fallen. We are very blessed that many of the men we were friends with are safe at home with their families now, but sadly a few were not so lucky. If you didn’t take the time to silently thank our soldiers yesterday, please try to remember to do that today.

It was a pretty productive weekend for me actually. Since I got back from MQX, I have been bound and determined to figure out the problem with my longarm machine. I was having issues where it would freeze up and completely stop if I slowed down too much while sewing. This, of course, really makes it hard to have sharp points, because you have to slow down a bit to get those. Additionally I was having lots of issues with eye-lashing thread on the backs of my quilts. This is very frustrating as I purchased the machine with the hope of quilting for others eventually, but if I can’t get these issues fixed, there is no way I would put anyone else’s quilt on there!

So I sat down on Saturday and did some research on Google to see if I could find some fixes. There were a few suggestions for the whole stopping when I slow down thing, which I did. Then for the eye-lashing, I pulled out my new tension gauges and figured out how to check the proper tension for my top and bottom threads. I put in a new needle, and crossed my fingers. I threw a quilt that my son helped me create and just went to town.

I was super surprised to find that all my issues were fixed! The machine still has a little bit too much vibration, but I think that may be because my table isn’t quite level.

For the quilting, I tried a simple design that I learned from my MQX class. I was able to get pretty sharp points, and when I slowed down to make them, the machine kept plugging along. I need to work on slowing down overall to help keep my stitches more consistent, but I am very excited for what I have already been able to do!

This is the back of the quilt, I know many people would think I am crazy to put ‘Cars’ on the back of this beautiful front, but this is 100% my son’s quilt. He picked the fabric for the front, he picked the pattern, I made the blocks themselves, but he did the placement of them. So he got to pick the backing, and he picked this cars sheet I picked up from a thrift shop.

I went with a simple brown fabric for the binding. I figured that would help keep the front looking nice and separate it from the backing.

Seeing the backing and the front together does make me cringe and smile at the same time. It makes me cringe because it is such a beautiful, grown-up front, and the back is such a kid-quilt backing. But it makes me smile too because it is just so my son to combine these two things.

I am still practicing on my quilting, but I have my meander down pretty good. I am hoping to be able to offer my services to others pretty soon. I will probably just focus on doing a simple meander for people, which will keep the costs really low. I will keep you updated on this if anyone is interested in my services.

Happy Quilting!
Rachel