New Year's Eve

The alarm went off at 8, but it was much closer to nine when I was able to rouse myself from bed. I had the usual breakfast with e-mail. It was close to 11 when I called Cathy to see if the longarm was free so I could quilt my Christmas quilt. She suggested I go in to help Mary with her quilt and then I could do my own. So I made arrangements to meet Mary at 11:30. Neither of us made it. My excuse was that when I got to my car, I hadn't my keys. Also the gate guard wanted to see my quilt top. Chris brought my keys, and I was on my way. When I got there, I turned on the machine and oiled it. When Mary got there, she showed me the top, and we cut some batting for it. We basted it, and started quilting it before checking the tension. It was bad. Try as we might, we couldn't get it right. Then Cathy came over. She has her own longarm bobbin case. And she put in a new needle. Well, that seemed to do the trick. We got Mary's quilt done in no time. She packed up and left to pay. Cathy stayed for awhile to help me choose and prepare patterns for my Irish chain design. She brought some batting that she had strip pieced. It was almost wide enough. So she added another strip, but it stretched when she did it. She set up the first two rows of quilting and then left. She set me up so well, I had no trouble doing the other 3. She offered to come back tomorrow with a bell border pattern, but I decided I just wanted to take it home and bind it as is. It was almost 7 when I got home. Chris was cooking supper. I trimmed the extra batting and backing from the quilt. We ate supper while watching more episodes of MacGyver. Then I cut and sewed binding strips together. I sewed the binding onto the quilt, but it didn't lie well where the batting was stretched. So I had to cut into the batting on that edge and let it overlap itself. Then I was able to finish the machine-sewing part. Gotta get this blog post done by midnight.