Lady June is up and running better than ever.

 Hey there! Yesterday was a great great quilting day for my little studio. With every move...and there have been very many in my 36 years, I always have some sort of "crazy time". I mean this in a very loose since of the term. Our last move to Texas I went a little crazy when the Air Force housing lady refused to give us a 4 bedroom house because we only had 3 kids. All the people living around us (with the exception of the Smiths' who had 5 kids) did not have any kids at all and all lived in 4 bedrooms. Anyway I went a tad crazy and demanded to have chickens. I thought I wanted them for several reasons and began rattling off the reasons why they made the perfect pet...the last reason being you could eat them. The lady's eyes got bigger and more freaked out with each thing I uttered. I had never mentioned wanting chickens to my husband so he was looking at me like I was a lunatic as well and encouraged me to go look after the kids while he signed for our 3 bedroom house. I think I had read a blog about someone having chickens that morning and for some reason my pitiful little mind latched onto the fact that chickens would be handy pets in the insect and reptile infested landscape that was San Angelo, Texas.

Needless to say I ended up totally LOVING our little house and we were blessed with the best neighbors imaginable. So my crazy was all for nothing.

Well, so far for this move my Crazy focus has been Lady June (my 36 inch Gammill Supreme Long Arm) and her 14 foot long table. I have actually had nightmares about ridiculous things happening to her. Well, when our house hold goods arrived and her poles did not make it I almost started crying in front of our 7  movers. They made a vow that my poles would be there as soon as they could make it happen. Thank goodness it was only about 2 days. Well, while she didn't have poles she did have other issues that sent me spiraling into quilters madness.Her crank shaft refused to turn. That is bad, Really bad. It means for some reason she was jammed somewhere along the line. We tried to fix her ourself, but I was afraid that something was so damaged it was out of our hands. How would I ever find a machine to replace her? I called the Gammill dealer in Kansas City and her repair man came up to take a look at her. It turned out that the problem was fairly simple, and she just needed a ton of oil due to how she had been sitting in the crate and gravity took her oil away from her moving places. While Dave was up in Leavenworth looking at my machine we made a couple other changes as well. She has new wheels and a fine new bobbin case.with a backlash spring. Oh she also runs so well. Her tension has never been so wonderful. I am so happy that my machine is working well and I don't have to go out and find a replacement machine.

If you are still with me after that rant, here is the first quilt I have quilted on Lady June. It is a Downy Quilt For Kids that I put together years ago and lost. Well with all the unpacking and sorting I found it again. It quilted up like an absolute dream.

Not one thread break and perfect tension. I keep coming back to tension because it can be tricky with a long arm. Obviously you want perfect tension, right? I took a little Craftsy class with Angela Walters about Machine Quilting Negative Space. I recently bought her book and then saw on her blog that she had a class too. I love actually watching how someone quilts, so I signed right up for her class. It was great and you can use the skills she teaches on either a domestic machine or a long arm. That was my very first ever Craftsy class. It was awesome and now I am wondering why I waited so long to do this. I think I may really love Craftsy.

Here the little quilt is all finished. I just need to bind it and find another little one to send off along with it. I hope they will still accept it since I was so late in finishing it.

While I was quilting away in the studio, my husband and kiddos were making stairs and a rope bridge to the little forest on the other side of the creek bed.

Let the adventures begin! I think I am ready to take some more quilt tops as well, so if you would like to have a top quilted just send me an email. tiacurtisquilts@gmail.com

Have a great rest of your weekend!

Tia