The owl has flown and the Janome moved in

Lots of people have seen my latest project, the owl quilt, as I've been working on it. I'm just, well, I'm just tickled with this quilt. It was so much fun to make.

I designed the applique, that just turned out great. It's got to be one of my best satin stitching jobs. I cut all of the squares, which lined up perfectly when I pieced everything together. The only hitch I had was with the free motion quilting that I wanted to do around the edges. It just didn't work out, so I ended up framing with straight lines around the edges. It looks fine, but I would have liked the free motion quilting better. These straight lines do look nice from the back though. All in all, a wonderful quilt. I hope Lauren and her new little daughter Virginia enjoy it.

So in trying to do the free motion quilting on my regular machine, which I had done before on a previous quilt, I figured out that my machine just couldn't keep up with what I wanted to do. I tried new needles. I tried playing with the upper thread tension. I tried the bobbin tension. I tried new needles. I tried new thread. I even tried three different bobbins. I love my little Brother machine. It sews great, but as my mom says, I sew like a bat out of hell. I like to go FAST, which isn't a setting on my Brother machine.

I'd been debating if and when I wanted to buy a new machine. I decided I wanted to get one that would last for, oh, the next thirty years or so, which meant I would have to fork out some major money (and use it until I'm 60). And then the quilt shop in Noblesville had to up and advertise that they were having a huge sale on their in-stock sewing machines. I went in the shop, and I walked out with a machine...that will last me the next thirty years. I spent a lot on it, but I got almost $1000 off the original price, plus a free one-on-one class with their sewing specialists to learn everything about the machine, plus a free cleaning in a year, plus 10% off my other purchases for a few months. And the thing I like about it the best is that it's not one of those fancy, computer screen sewing machines. It just sews, and it sews well. (And it has two alphabets for embroidery.) That's exactly what I wanted. And it has a longer arm on it so you have more room to sew and quilt. It's a Janome 6600P. I talked to almost every person in the quilt shop, and three of them own one, while the rest of them want one. And these are people that sew on $5000 machines. I think I made a good purchase. Now all I have to do is pay off the credit card I put it on.

And life wouldn't be fun if you didn't make brownies for Daddy while he was on the way home from work. Perfect thing to do on a rainy day. I love watching my girls try to mix things up to bake. So much effort and concentration in such little packages. And faces shmeered with chocolate aren't bad either.