Friday, February 5, 2021

A Friday Flimsy and Cleaning The Quilter

 Happy Friday Quilting Friends!  First I want to thank all of you who shared your thoughts on naming this quilt.  It's unanimous, she will officially be named A Podunk Picnic.  You all know me well and have chosen the perfect quilt name. 


Bonnie's mystery quilts are usually inspired by an event of some sort throughout the year.  One year she went to China and the quilt that year was inspired by all the colors she saw during her visit.  And since this one is called On Ringo Lake, I'm pretty sure she visited Ringo lake in 2016 or 17.  Her Ringo quilt was made with teal, brown, white and salmon fabrics.  Perfect colors for a lake quilt.

Click on image to purchase pattern.

Thursday evenings adventure of the quilt onto the quilt frame.

Before quilting A Podunk Picnic I need to do a little preventative maintenance on my quilter.   The quilter has been setting unused and uncovered since early September. I think I've only quilted one quilt since September but it was quilted on my domestic machine.


My quilter isn't some big fancy machine with bells and whistles.  She's a Bailey Home Quilter 15.  I've made a ton of modifications to this machine over the last 10 years to make her work the way I want her too.  The only fancy feature she has is a stitch regulator but it isn't as responsive as the newer stitch regulators on the big girl machines.


The manufacturer of this machine suggests oiling the bobbin area in between each bobbin used. I don't usually do that unless the machine sounds or acts like it needs it.  They also suggest oiling the bearing behind the bobbin area often.  When I talked to the owner of the company on the phone he suggested I oil after ever quilt because at the time I was quilting quilts to death.  These days I don't quilt my quilts to death but I still like to keep her oiled and running smoothly.  Taking it apart and oiling it between each quilt is much easier than having it lock up with a quilt on the frame.  Been there, done that and it's a chore.  You have 2 choices when that happens.  1. Take the quilt off the frame and oil it.  2. Leave the quilt on the frame and oil it.  It only took one time of doing #2 and getting oily black gunk on my quilt to change my mind about oiling in between each quilt.


Clearing out the gunk on the bearing is the worst part.  One or two drops of oil on the bearing and let my machine run for about 15 minutes.  Here's the oil I use to get into those tricky spots.  Before I found this I was trying to put a few drops of oil in a drinking straw to try to reach the inner workings of the machine.  Oh boy did I make a mess. This loosens up all the gunk.  Then once it's nice and warm I speed up the machine it throws the gunk everywhere.  Again it only takes one time of throwing gunk everywhere and you learn to cover the bearing with a rag or scrap fabric.  Could you imagine having this on your pretty new quilt top?  My goodness she was a dirty girl.


Cleaning the machine from start to finish takes about 2 hours.  While it sits idling and loosening up the gunk I dust and clean other areas of the machine and frame.  At last I can start loading the quilt backing.  With a pieced backing I like to have my seams running horizontal.  Vertical seams can cause puckering issues about halfway through a quilt.   You would think that it was as easy as pinning it on and rolling it up onto the bars.  NOPE.  I roll it up on the front bar, then roll it all onto the back bar and then back to the front bar.  Hopefully by this time the seams are lining up perfectly straight with the front bar.  As you can see in the picture below this one is perfect.  Yah!  I can get this girl loaded and based down before bedtime.


Oh but there's a snag in the works.  GRRR.  My quilt top is 75 x 90.  The only batting on hand is 72 x 90.  Sigh.  I could dig through the scraps of batting and make a franken-batting but it's late, I'm tired and I hate piecing batting.  Looks like I'm done for the day and there's going to be a road trip in the morning.


Oh well, I need to catch up on my reading of the book 
"Earthing, the most important health discovery ever"  

Boy what a long title.  When I was younger my books of choice were by Steven King, John Grisham, Danielle Steel and V.C Andrews.  I wasn't too picky as you can see by the list of authors.  These days novels bore me to death.  So I read books that teach me something.  I wish I had this love of learning when I was younger but that's a story for another day.  

Earthing?  What is it?  To sum it up short and sweet it's about putting your bare feet on the ground outside and the health benefits of doing so.  Who knew this is so important.  If your interested and would like to know more without reading, here's a link to the free documentary on Youtube.  It'll give you the basics in about an hour. 


I've been Earthing, also called Grounding, for a little over a month.  To my shock there have been some changes.  Could it be a placebo effect? Possibly.

  But here's what I've noticed.  Top of the list is I sleep more than 2 hours at a time.  For years(all my life) my sleep has been very little at a time.  Now I sleep 7-8 hours with one bathroom break. 

 As a quilters we stand or sit for very long periods of time.  For me the sitting causes leg swelling and the standing causes back pain.  Since grounding while doing either and grounding while sleeping, my swelling and pain have been reduced.  Especially the morning roll and groan to get out of bed.  It was a shock to me the first time I woke up and just got out of bed.  I didn't notice.  I had made it to the coffee pot one morning before it dawned on me how I just popped out of bed, dressed, made through the house without groaning in pain or running into anything. 

I could ramble on all day about this topic but I've got a batting run to make this morning.

  Hope you all have a Yippy Skippy day!
 
Happy Stitching!








I haven't joined in with a linky party in a long time.  While reading quilting blogs this morning I saw this one and thought " What the heck, lets link up!"  Hop on over, you might find a new to blog or a must make to add to the ever growing list.


 























  



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10 comments:

  1. What a happy cheerful quilt! I love the colors you picked out. I might have to add that pattern to my “to make” list.

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  2. I though I recognized that design, so sunny! I love it when people change up the colors of a Quiltville mystery. I hope to try that one day. I will never complain about having to oil my puny DSMs again....

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  3. I am interesting in the Earthing. Are you walking outside in the cold weather. i am assuming you are having winter weather at the moment or did you get grounding pads? I watched the movie. I suffer from a lot of inflammation so I need to try this.

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  4. Your quilt is so beautiful! I love that you made this pattern with the fabrics you love and didn't copy Bonnie's quilt. I'm looking forward to seeing the quilting, happy stitching!

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  5. Your quilt is soooo beautiful!! And it really does remind me of a picnic.

    That book sounds fascinating. Thanks for mentioning it. For a long time I only read self-help books. I remember thinking fiction was a waste of time. But now I like both. Actually not a lot of self help these days (although I probably need it haha) but good fiction and non-fiction.

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  6. I watched the video, it's all new to me. DH the electrical engineer scoffed at first, I said, lets research more. Now he mentioned they sometimes wore bracelets to ground them selves in the labs not to influence the computers... I went outside in the freezing cold this morning barefoot to play with the dog. I'm nervous while reading some people's reactions to the vaccine knowing I'm so allergic to so much in life, and how autoimmune issues cause trouble but know I need and must get it as the virus leaves 1/8 people with mental cognitive issues as well as lung scarring. If you live which half a million in our country haven't. What a day and time we're in for stress.

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  7. I've been a follower of you for years. I love your love of color, design and everything else!! NOW I am a follower of your reading habits. lol I listened to and watched the documentary for over an hour. At 83, I don't DO that anymore. However, I am absolutely believe the rewards of Earthing. I, too, cannot stand without back pain (2 fusions later and same pain) for long .. and I love to bake and cook. I also have heart issues and my legs swell badly when sitting and quilting. Earthing here I come!! I've ordered the book and will definitely read it. I am an avid mystery reader but there is no mystery for Earthing!!! Makes total sense to me. Definitely appreciate and thank you. Lesson learned!!

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  8. Your version of On Ringo Lake is SEW darling!! Best of luck on the quilting.

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  9. A Poduck Picnic is AWESOME!!! I love all those colors and its just so happy and bright!!! Congrats on the great finish - and yay for linking up!!

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  10. Glad you linked up. Love the colors of your Podunk Picnic quilt. Thanks for all the info.

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