Keryn and I are hard at work dealing with all the tops that have come in lately. I thought I'd give you a photo essay (thanks for that phrase Henrietta, I like it) of a day in the life of a longarm quilter.First, there was this on the frame... It's 94" by 105", so this one's big. Not the biggest I've ever done, that honour belonged to a 109" monster that I quilted on my Janome 6500, and I even managed to freehand in the centre of it. Now with our lovely Ms Millhouse I'll never have to do that again, shudder...This took hours and hours, even with the Statler, those rows were looong.While that's stitching away, quilting one of Keryn's pantos, Country Garden over it..I get this little baby quilt ready to post back to it's owner. This was a kit quilt, and it turned out very nicely.A knock at the door, and two more tops come in- but one of them is just a pile of patches and embroidery which we will set together as well! Service is our middle name!

Then it's onto this quilt, spread out on our large table and checked for threads and any problems. See those little orange 'flags'? We pin those on the quilt as we go along, anywhere that needs attention later on, thread starts that have to be woven in, overstitching that has to be unpicked, threads to be clipped.It's done with good ole Celtic Scrolls, always a safe choice for a guy's quilt because it's not flowery and sissy.Then it's hung up for it's mug shot. I'm keeping a record of all the quilts that we do, and eventually plan to print out each one into a 'brag book', that will also help to show customers what we do. It's nice to look back and see how much we have done, it's easy to forget what you've accomplished sometimes.
This quilt is waiting to be picked up, a first quilt started by a young mother for her first child.That little girl is now two years old, and the mum was thrilled to have found us and get this finished at last.

A lot of people have been requesting that we make the binding and sew it on as well, so that all they have to do is handstitch it down. Now we might be considered weird, but we both actually like the binding process, so if they're willing to pay a bit exta, we don't mind doing it.
How did it get to be so dark outside? The days just seem to fly by, and they're full of quilts. And after we stop working on all the customer quilts we go off and sew our own. Perhaps we're more than a 'little' weird......
But it's a good weird.