Taking Care of Business

Have I mentioned that I love machine quilting?  If not, perhaps it is somewhat obvious from my posts. ;-)  Have I mentioned that others have show interest in my quilting?  There are a few posts on that, too.  That interest brought me to a bit of a crossroads in my quilting endeavors.  As my profile states, I lean towards a quiet life and being entrepreneurial has never really been more than a fleeting thought here or there.  However, with requests for quilting coming my way now and then, I needed to decide what direction to take.

After weighing the options, I decided to take the plunge and make myself an actual business.  I am working through the permit process slowly and hope to have all that figured out before too long. Though I am officially a business woman now, I am not trying to be a business in the sense of actively building clientele.  Rather, when requests do come my way, I want to be able to take on that work without any questionable money issues.  

The other side of being a business is time, and that, as much as anything, was a big factor in my consideration.  While I love working on projects for other people, I still want time to do my own projects.  I also didn't want to have a schedule that was constantly pressed for time.  The house still needs to be cleaned, the laundry done, and meals fixed.  Nor do I want the pressure of a backload of projects.  

The blessing of my situation is that I don't need to do this for income, therefore I can take on only the amount of projects I have time for.  I can devote up to four hours a week for commissioned quilts--not a lot of time, but enough to keep things moving steadily.  I will have two hours a week reserved solely for my own projects.  And, of course, when I don't have any commissioned quilts in the works, I can spend more time on my own projects.  

So, I am headed down a new path, and I look forward to seeing where this adventure leads.  

Retreat!

Our forces gathered.  We loaded our equipment. Drivers and troops entered the vehicles and off to the country we retreated for an overnight, nothing but quilting, getaway.  

The retreat center is a work-in-progress begun by the son and daughter-in-law of one of my quilt ladies.  Though the facility is still lacking finishing touches, it is a great workspace with all the necessary amenities for all day quilting fun.
  
We each had our own table--plenty of room spread out all our fabrics and supplies.  There were also a couple of design boards, an area for ironing, and one for cutting.  The chairs were comfy and had wheels, so we could maneuver around quite easily.  

A full kitchen made meals quick and easy.

Here is my space.  The proprietors had several Ott lights available, so we had excellent lighting in our workspaces.

And here are some of our projects.  K finished binding off one of our group quilts.

B had this wonderful wall hanging of Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

N was working on this project.  Love the fabrics. 

D started on a cute baby quilt.

W worked on a charm quilt.  Really pretty.

P began a quilt for her granddaughter.  Great colors.

L put the binding on a quilt for a soon to come great grandbaby.  I did the quilting on this one and will have more details on it in another post.

P helped with the binding on this group quilt.  

K used a curtain panel to make this sweet group quilt.  

 S made this lovely Christmas table runner.  

We had lots of fun, lots of quilting, and lots of fellowship.  We will definitely have to plan to do this again.  Retreat!

Interest in Pinterest

A long time ago my daughter-in-law suggested that I set up a Pinterest account.  It looked interesting, but I couldn't think of anything I would use it for.  A few weeks ago, however, when I was doing a search for free motion quilting designs, I came across some quilting boards on Pinterest. Hmmmm...now that had some possibilities.  

I am not a big fan of social media sites, but as this was more about gathering information than sharing information, I decided to go ahead and give it a try.  When I set up my account, the site had me pick five random boards to follow.  Not really sure how it all worked, I just followed their directions. Having been at it a few weeks, here are some things I have discovered and lessons I have learned:

1.  Following other people's boards puts a lot of random pictures on my main page, which wasn't useful for me.  What works better in my case is to go through the suggested boards sent to me in a weekly e-mail and repin pics to my boards.

2.  Since I want to be able to easily find pictures I have pinned, I want to keep my boards to no more than 100 pins each.  Therefore, I want to have more boards with specific subjects rather than large boards covering broad subjects.

3.  Conversely, when looking through boards, I stick to ones with 1000 pins or less.  Otherwise it takes too long to get through the board. 

4.  Pretty pics are great inspiration, and I have found lots of quilting ideas both for piecing and quilting.

5.  Having ideas on Pinterest is very mobile.  One of my Tuesday ladies wants to make a charm quilt so I created a board for charm quilts.  I don't have access to wifi where we meet, so I took screen shots of my board on my iPad and then showed her the pics.  She found a quilt she liked and we worked up the pattern.  Awesome!

I am definitely in a state of QuiBLE--Quilt ideas beyond life expectancy.  Guess I had better get busy. :-)

Limeade and Mangos

My quilting these days feels a little like Whack a Mole, except that instead of pesky moles one tries to get rid of, there are all these quilts I want to get my hands on.  They keep popping up and I am saying, "Wait right there, I'll come get you in a minute.  Oh, and you, too.  Hold on, I'm coming.  Oooo, look at that one!"  Mr. J, Rev. J, and I keep humming along and hoping all these quilts will wait patiently for me.  

Here is a quilt created by N, one of my quilting ladies.  Bright and cheery, I love the colors. Presenting Limeade and Mangos...

N pieced the top and then did quilting in the ditch in the around the blocks.  I came back and added quilting in the blocks.

Wanted to try something a little different, I did three columns of leaves in the green blocks.  While it worked, in retrospect, making the leaves bigger would probably have been more effective.  

A simple flower petal design worked well for the nine-patches. 

I hope this little quilt gives warmth and cheer to whoever receives it.  All right now, all you quilts...who's next?



  

Happy Labor Day!

My hubby's work schedule make weekend times a precious commodity for us, so holiday weekends are especially welcome around here.  My dearest took off early on Friday and came home with these...

Happy Labor Day!