Quilting Up Purple Jubilee!

THIS was a big part of why I went to Florida.

Remember when the whole long arm machine circuit board event happened - smoke and all?

My friend Terri reached out with offers to help, offers to quilt - along with many others I am so grateful for.

Terri and I have the same APQS Millennium machines, though hers is a few years newer than mine - there are some control differences.

A few years back when moving the quilting machine up to the QPO Studio I had thought about what I would do if my old CompuQuilter system went belly up.  After all, it is 14 years old and was running on a tower PC with Windows XP - It required a keyboard, monitor and mouse and was sitting on the side taking up table space.

This whole thing with the circuit board brought me to a standstill and I knew it was time to plan for the future.

Intelliquilter was always at the back of my mind, as they were the ones who came out to our place in South Carolina many moons ago to add the stitch regulator to my old APQS Ultimate I machine.

So here we are.

I contacted Terri back, said "Are you serious?" She said "When can you come?" and that was that.

This is it!  The screen is with you all of the time!

No more walking back to the table to see what the monitor is showing.  And technology improves.

That also means that I've got a bit of a learning curve ahead of me as I unlearn what felt natural to me after 14 years of running CompuQuilter - and pick up the different dance of Intelliquilter.

While Intelliquilter ran on a series of cables beneath the machine - Intelliquilter runs cleanly on a track - it's SMALL y'all!

This is at the side/back of the machine -

And a quilting away we go!

There are so many differences that are hard to describe - I think it's being used to one thing, and one thing only for 14 years.

The CompuQuilter was attached to the cables by two big screw knobs.  In order for me to freehand anything I had to go under the machine and unscrew one cable lock, go around the machine to unscrew the other cable lock on on the carriage...and the running was never very free-floating.  And then go back and screw both places back down again.

Over 14 years I gave up free handing ANYTHING and doing it all by computer - including basting - because it was easier than all of that unscrewing - re-screwing.

The biggest difference for me is that Intelliquilter will release and go back to manual mode with the tap of one button on the screen.  One tap and you are free to freewheel anywhere you want to go. This is also going to take a little bit of time to get used to.

This also means I need to reacquaint myself with which buttons are what on my handles as I have a 2008 Millennium with all the colored buttons in the big joy stick handles.  I don't have the touch controls on the front of the machine like Terri has.

But we were born to learn new tricks!

Purple Jubilee over Terri's porch rail!

Testing it out on the bed!

We chose a larger swirly pattern due to the scale of the big blocks in the quilt, and I'm glad we didn't quilt it smaller and tighter - we were on a time crunch to get 2 quilts done in the time that I was there.

And we won at Thread Chicken - 

Boy, that was a close one!

We celebrated quilt finishes and Terri's birthday at PF Chang's.  Complete with Great Wall of Chocolate cake because we deserved it!

Happy Birthday week, friend!

Believe it or not, there was cake still on the plate when we got up to leave - we just couldn't - neither of us!  We sure tried though!

Yesterday was all about getting the mail order caught up from my time away.  Quite a bit of it was rulers for our upcoming Chilhowie mystery going out to folks who don't have them from last year.  There are so many newbies joining us this year, and that is exciting!

I dropped everything I could fill at the USPS by the time they closed at 11:30am. (Rural PO) everything else is filled and labeled and will be dropped off this morning.

It's also yearly physical day including female exams.  I'm putting this out in public because if you haven't had a pap in a while and are due for one - get it.  We've got too many things we want to keep doing to put it off.

When that's done I'm headed back to the QPO studio to get that binding on the purple one so I can be hand stitching it down over Thanksgiving!

This happens TODAY! 2pm Eastern!

Meet us TODAY, Wednesday, Nov. 23 at 2pm ET for a new Textile Talk!.⁣

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We'll screen my interview with Frances O'Roark Dowell and talk about the QSOS project, the largest collection of its kind in the world (and one every quilter should know about).⁣

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My interview was recorded last week as I was preparing for the big reveal of the first clue for our annual Mystery Quilt Chilhowie (to be released on Black Friday). ⁣

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It's free to register, but you must register to participate!⁣

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QSOS stands for Quilters' Save Our Stories, the largest oral history project about quilters of its kind, archived in the Library of Congress. 

Textile Talks is a free series and the recordings are also available on YouTube afterwards. 

And Zoom didn't kick me out or make my audio out of line with my mouth moving, so that was very good.

Let’s save quilt history with the Quilt Alliance! 

Register HERE for this free program.

Find out more about the Quilt Alliance and the QSOS project HERE.

In Other News: I keep hearing from folks who have such great info that I want to pass on to you, my readers.

For instance:

Craftoptics!

You know how I love my Craftoptics for close handwork. I received an email from Jeff Caplan to see if I needed my prescription updated on mine, and who to contact if so.

My next eye exam is in January, and if there are significant changes I will send them in to be updated.

There was also  this info to pass on to you:

Also a reminder that our Black Friday sale is on now, but your coupon will always be better than what we offer the public. The coupon QUILTVILLE saves your subscribers $125 off the WOW Package. Our Black Friday coupon saves $100 off the package.

My coupon QUILTVILLE is always available to you.  Maybe you want  to add Craftoptics to your Holiday list?

There is also yesterday's Summit St Box Gift-Away.  Did you enter to win ON THAT POST? Our two winners will be drawn on Wednesday 11/30/22.

Alright!  That's it!  I'm off to mail this stuff, and perhaps trim a quilt and get binding cut before I head to the doc, and then finish up getting that binding on when I get back.

Are you busy with Thanksgiving prep?  Perhaps you can listen to the QSOS interview while you are up to your elbows in pie making.  2pm Eastern. Don't forget!

Quiltville Quote of the Day -

I truly believe this.

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If you are feeling bad about your situation, go and help someone who's got more struggles than you do.

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It will open your eyes to all you've already been blessed with.

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Antique broken dishes quilt shared by my friend Siobhan.

Have a wonderful Wednesday, everyone!