Week 2 Blog Hop for 2015 New Quilt Bloggers Is On

The 2015 Advice and Tech Help for New Bloggers is
going strong. I'm part of the Sew Fabulous hive, and our button below was designed by one of our own. It was part of our commitment to learn new technology, and many of us had never designed a button before. We think we're pretty awesome now! I love the checks and fonts!

Each week a new group of bloggers joins the Blog Hop with prizes and fun. Check out this week's gang below, and show them some love! Did you know there are prizes involved for you?

Quilting Fabulous

Chopping Block Quilts

Anja Quilts

Twin Mom Quilts

Hosting the event this year:

My hostess, Stephanie--Late Night Quilter

Cheryl--Meadow Mist Designs. 

Terri Ann--Childlike Fascination

Yvonne--Quilting Jet Girl

Each of these Hive mamas has a list of their featured bloggers, and links to the giveaways. It's a good way to find newer bloggers that may not yet be on your radar, but just your style.

Until next time...
Come on, Doxie girls.
Let's go sew.

Linking up today with~

Wrens and Friends-First Offical Quilt in Axel

The test piece I had quilted on my HQ Avante, Axel, had loopies on the back, and tension problems where I made curves. I took it to a group of ladies over the weekend, and asked their opinion. A mid-armer in the group told me when in doubt, just rethread your machine. Can we give her a standing ovation? Confetti?

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best, and, "Yes, it worked!" It worked because I used the diagram in my book, and found I had it threaded incorrectly the first time.

Time to do a real quilt now. The above fabric is the backing of a quilt I made for my oldest daughter last fall. Gina Martin for Moda designed this Wrens and Friends line along with this very sweet border print. I wanted to be sure I balanced the edges of the quilt so I didn't ruin the border, so I reversed the border, using it as center. 

I seamed mirror images together, and loaded it so the seam ran horizontally. If your seam orientation is this way, you can eye it with the bar as you roll it up. If you see it as a straight line down that bar, you know you've got it pretty even. If I had loaded it with a vertical seam, I would be forever measuring and adjusting the seam to lie in the center as I rolled. 

Now the widely space floral that comes off as dots will lie along the border. A little inconsistancy will not be seen, and I might expect that with my first quilting.

I only have a handful of thread colors right now so we chose pale yellow for the top thread, and off-white for the bobbin. Loopies for the center are very quick, and remind me of the path of a bee. With hexagon blocks, it seemed fitting. The border will be a different pattern.

No time to dilly-dally online today with daylight burning at 6 a.m. I hope you all enjoyed a Happy Father's Day, or a Trevlig Midsommer, whichever you celebrated this past weekend. The Pet Project Show is still in progress through today at midnight, and you may link up as many projects as you've done over the past week.

Cheers to all WIP's, and remember we're coming to the end of the second quarter for Finishes on the Windy Side. Finish them up, and follow along as bloggers post their beautiful work with Adrianne. I hope to have this in my stack by then.

Linking up today with~
Quilt Story-who featured me today!
Blossom Heart Quilts
Freemotion by the River
Show and Tell Tuesday
Hug-a-Bit Quilts
Cooking Up Quilts
Show and Tell with Bambi

Pet Project Show #25

Thank you for all the warm wishes on my longarm acquistion. I've laughed out loud reading the names you've given to yours! You are some creative stitchers.

In honor of the Pet Project Show, I stylized a couple of our pets in thread up above--a llama and a dachsund.

 My first finish is this little test run. The front looks pretty good, but the back has some lingering issues with tension. It's time to dig deeper into my manual and online, and fine tune before I start a real piece. 

Black fabric with red thread is not the most photogenic. Close up you get a decent picture, but stand away and you have problems. Anyone have advice to offer?

I'm off to a talk by a ruler designer for Creative Grids today. I'm told she'll have a little trunk show, too, and I'm looking forward to meeting her. 

Linking up with~
Free Motion Mavericks

Show Off Saturday

In the meantime, on with our party! I invite you to add as many links as you've posted over the past week. If you've posted 3 times since last Saturday, you can link all three. You're not limited to just one, so show them all off! And I've enabled voting, so we can all vote for our top 3 choices. I think it will be fun to see the 3 winners next week.

Thank you to each one of you who link up with the Pet Project Show. I love to see your work here!
***********

Come on, Doxie Girls.
It's Saturday, and time for the weekly 

Pink Doxies 

Pet Project Show. 

Add your link here every Saturday-Monday. 

Rules

Do we have to have rules? 

No worries! It's EASY.

1. Use the blue 'Add Your Link' button (below left)
to upload a picture of something you've created 
in the past week. Any kind of handiwork--
share it now! It can be a work in progress, 
finally finished, or even your fab new fabric. 
Whatever it is that inspired you to create this 
week, we'd like to see it here. 

2. Please link to a specific post, and not just your
blog address. It makes it easy for anyone following 

your link to find the project.

3. Provide a backlink to Pink Doxies with a link in
your post, or pick up our Pet Project Show
button in the sidebar. Copy the code, then 
create a Pet Show widget with 'Add by HTML' 
on your Layout page.

-OR-

1. You can link up to your Instagram. 
Click on the Instagram icon at the bottom 
of the link up screen. The URL of your Instagram 
feed will be your link. 
Please hashtag #pinkdoxiespetproject

Either way you link up, remember it's a party
here, so schmooze with the crowd! Visit others 
who've linked up. Leave a comment so they 
know what you like about their work. 

Don't miss a post! 

Follow me on Bloglovin' or by email. 

The Linky Party starts now, and runs until
Monday, June 20th at midnight. 

Spread the word, and tell all your stitchy friends.

*The first Saturday party of each month will
feature several of the Doxies and my
favorite link ups.
By linking up, you are giving permission for me
to post your picture with a link back to your 

blog or Instagram account. 

An InLinkz Link-up

Meet Axel, My Avante!

My Big Secret has arrived, and it seems fit to make it this week's Friday Finish. May I say I never dreamed this day would actually happen? I'm bruised from pinching myself.

Axel , my new Avante by Handiquilter, was delivered Wednesday. I had to name it after all my friends with machines had given theirs names. Sandra at Musings of a Menopausal Melon has an Avril, so I stuck with the "A" names. Axel suits it.

I sweet-talked my daughter into taking a few pictures. It's all real here. Five huge boxes and two small were on that truck for me, and they were heavy!

We lugged most of them up the stairs ourselves, but 2 of the heaviest were more than we could handle. I was going to have to wait all afternoon for someone stronger to come home and help. I figured out that key parts were in those 2 boxes, and begged another daughter to help me. I think the adrenaline helped, because we got those up, too!

Most of the basic table was together by the time my more mechanical half got home. We worked together until I said I could finish on my own the next day. This was where I started in the morning.

Bungees, velcro, leaders. Finish adding parts to the machine itself, and all threaded. I was ready to load a practice piece. This is when I realized I hadn't raised it to fit my height.

Carefully remove 2 poles. Take off the machine and the carriage.

I will tell you I had a smaller person there with Herculean strength, and we raised that table up with the aid of packing tape to hold the catches open. I don't recommend this method.

This is where I hit the wall. I had no idea how to load a quilt, and I was so tired by this point that I didn't remember to watch the dvd's that contain everything you need to know. My quilt store was so understanding when I called half a dozen times with little questions including this one, and was wonderful at sending me PDF's to help. Even so, I pinned and repinned leaders 5 times before I could make it all work in my mind, and on the machine.

My first go at it. I had lots of tension issues at first, but the shop had already given me good instructions on how to remedy this with both bobbin and machine adjustment. Several phone calls to a good friend with an HQ Sweet Sixteen led to much better results. Beth at Cooking Up Quilts heard it running on the phone, and you would have thought we were cooing over a new baby between us! Seriously, we are adult women, but it just purrs!

I didn't buy this on a whim. I started looking at longarms last fall when I used one in a local shop. I was just new on the quilting blogger's scene, and it really wasn't something I needed. I investigated all the brands. I talked with and ran an APQS, Gammill, and Tin Lizzie. I looked for a used machine for months, and made many, many phone calls. Longarm University is a good source to look for all kinds of used longarms, if you're looking. When so many friends talked up the Handiquilter products, I decided there had to be something to it. The warranty is the best I've found, and we had many shops within 2 hours.

Sue and David at Quilt Trends in Columbus, Ohio were the best I found on price--they were running a sale along with an HQ promotion, and have been excellent in training. The day I travelled to actually look at the Avante, I spent nearly 3 hours with them in the store, and going over the machine. In home training takes place in a few weeks for me, and I hope to have some good experience before then.

After all the waiting and heavy lifting, and in spite of the fact it might not be the most flattering, can you see the Joy on my face? No buyer's remorse here. While something such as a longarm is a tangible thing, I see it as a way to express Joy in thread and cloth.

Did you ever have anything that was just so exciting, and you weren't sure why? You couldn't quit smiling, and when you woke up at night and remembered, it made you smile again? I'm a little speechless, and that's rare.

C.S. Lewis wrote some powerful words on his pursuit of joy,

and may help me express my feelings. 

"All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still 'about to be'."

--C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

Linking up with~
Crazy Mom Quilts
A Quilting Reader's Garden
LAFF
Quilt Shop Gal
TGIFF
Confessions of a Fabric Addict

**************************

This might be the best time for me, and YOU, too, to browse Craftsy tools and supplies. There is a BIG Weekend Sale with very tempting deep discounts on supplies through Sunday, June 21st. Up to 70% off! 
(I'm there already!)

Rules Were Made to Be Broken-Moda Modern Building Blocks #6

The original plan was to only use fabrics with prints that would present as solids. For instance, a dark red printed on a light red background, or a subtle colored print perhaps. I was trying to not repeat prints to give a greater variety, too. And I was reading about color theory at the same time. Perhaps my timing was poor, but I chucked most of the rules I'd imposed on the project, and wanted to see what would work.

The block above was listed in the pattern as green, and I couldn't bear another green block. I hit my Cotton+Steel fat quarter bundle, and loved the combination with the fussy cut lion.

When it was time to do the next block that actually called for peach, gold, and blue, I stared at the same FQ bundles. Why not? These are from 3 different designers, but the colors are similar. They're also colors echoed in other blocks in the quilt. Yes, it's terribly busy, and you may not like it close up, but to me it is effective in the quilt. The block would have been intense in solids, too. Try squinting at it for fun!

Can you see it in the context of the whole quilt?

There is a subtle balance in this pattern with regard to color distribution. You can start to pick out triangular placement of like colors, and I think the groupings of 3 make it pleasing to the eye. For instance, see the 3 highly visible orange blocks? If I had kept the lion block green, there would have been 3 strong greens. Even though I changed it to a print with an aqua tone, it works because there are 3 strong aquas. Corner, middle, bottom. It will be most interesting for me to see how all the 6" blocks play into the overall color!

Several new blocks have shown up in the picture, and I have fabric pulled for part of the remaining 6" blocks. I'm still aiming for a Friday flimsy finish. Keep your fingers crossed--or hold your thumbs, wherever you may be!

A new sewist asked me the other day how I knew to put the blocks together if there were no instructions on the pattern. Well, I've said before that this isn't a pattern for beginners. It's mainly cutting instructions. Some of it is intuitive from doing other patterns with similar construction. If you're newer, look up flying geese, HST, and how to line up points. Or, ask someone with more experience to just show you. Most veteran quilters are happy to share their expertise with newbies. We were all new when we started.

She also wanted to know how you center HST to sew onto a square. Good question! I just fold my square in half, and finger press a little crease. Then line up your triangle point with the crease, and pin or hold until you've sewn it.

If you have a whole line of triangles, which we would then call flying geese, use the straight edge of something to line up your points. Pin, or hold, and sew. 

Most of my points and seams line up, but not in every single case. Sometimes I go back and take in or let out a seam just the teensiest bit to make things fit better, but not always. I remember the wise advice by my dear friend, Irene: 

A man on a galloping horse is never going to see that!

Your skills will develop as you sew. Don't be so critical of your work that you miss the joy of creating whatever makes you happy!

Me: Hey, Doxie girls! Today's the big day! The secret is coming. We have to check all the boxes, and make sure it's all there, and just so. We should take pictures, shouldn't we?

Doxie girls: (Big yawn. Sleepy eyes. Mild interest in me to see if I have food.)

Me: Are you all ready? Will you promise not to escape and chase Mrs. UPS back into her truck? Please don't bark through the windows, okay?! It looks bad for us. I need more coffee!

I'm off to get ready for IT!

Until next time...

Come on, Doxie girls.

Let's go sew.

Linking up with~
Quilting Jet Girl
Freshly Pieced
Sew Fresh Quilts