I got an email a few weeks ago from a lady who belonged to a quilt group at a Los Angeles law firm, thus the moniker LA Law quilt. Their law firm is having a holiday event and they plan to raffle the quilt. LA is about 90 miles from Ramona. The groups' normal quilter had a machine problem and could not finish the quilt in time for their deadline.
The group had visited San Diego's Rosie's Calico Cupboard (20,000 bolts) fabric shop and heard that Rosie has a list of longarmers who have quilted charity quilts for her quilt project that gives quilts to the American Cancer Society's Camp Reach for the Sky which is a camp for kids ages 4 -18 with cancer. That's how they found me. I am one of Rosie's longarm volunteers. We emailed back and forth a few times and finally settled on a design, thread and pricing. I promised that I could turn the quilt around in 2 weeks. The quilt is a BQ (Big Quilt) done in beige, gold and burgundy. The back was a wide back in a deep burgundy. They wanted a leaf wreath in the big blocks, stipple in the background and leaf vines in the sashing; Warm & Natural batting. I used Old Gold PermaCore thread top and bobbin.
I was in the middle of quilting it when we had a family emergency and I had to leave town. When I got back to the quilt a few days later, it was quilting up fine. That was Sunday, October 21st, the day that the Witch Creek fire hit our town. I could see the smoke about 1:30 but I had to finish the quilt. I was sure they were going to evacuate us again. Four years ago, we couldn't come home for 2 and half days. So I kept quilting. The first reverse 911 call about voluntary evacuations came at 2:30. I took a break to pack a few clothes and my customer quilts in the car.
And I kept quilting. I finished the quilt at 4:15, pulled it off the machine, grabbed the dog and was driving down the street by 4:30. The mandatory evacuation came 25 minutes later. I like to get photos of my quilts so I laid the LA Law quilt on the bed at the hotel and got some photos of the quilt. The post offices were closed due to the fires. I found an UPS store that was opened and sent the quilt. It was one day late but they forgave me. They were very happy with their quilt.
2 comments:
Wow! What a story. Its just goes to show how dedicated we quilters are to our craft. I noticed in your bio that you use a Gammill. I just attended a quilt show in Chicago and an APQS vendor told me that she switched from Gammill to APQS after 6 months because the body of the Gammill shook when she did free motion quilting. I don't know if her story is true or if she is just trying to sell me a machine. What are your thoughts on this?
My first two machines were APQS. They were real workhorses. I learned how to quilt on those old machines so I will always have a warm spot in my heart ofr them. I moved to the Gammill because I wanted a new machine, the 30" throat and the Gammill stitch quality. All longarms are susceptible to vibration at high speed. It is usually minimized by tightening the bolts on crossbeam posts and making sure that the machine is level. Most of my work is is freemotion and I can fly on that Gammill.
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