Exciting!

 Yesterday the lovely team from Sewing With Passion, our local Bernina agents in Invercargill - Pauline and Jenny (and Jenny's hubby Andrew) -  arrived to set up my new Bernina Q20 longarm machine on a Studio frame! So exciting and I only tore myself away from it yesterday evening when a huge thunderstorm hit our town and I rapidly unplugged it all in case of a strike/power surge.

This is a very special treat to myself after Covid scuppered my intention to do a tour of Europe for my 50th birthday this year and I had all the money saved up, so what to do with it?!? (Well, for starters, we had a darn good 'Meet Me in Paris' party here in Edendale in June but that is whole 'nother story!)

I have been free motion quilting on my domestic Elna 720 for many years, and lately have been thinking about how nice it would be to not have to wrestle a quilt under the throat of a domestic machine (even if it does have an eight inch throat to help with that). I don't usually make anything much bigger than a lap or twin-size quilt because of that reason.

So I spent a bit of time at the quilt symposium in Lower Hutt a couple of weeks ago trying out both the table-top Q16 (in two classes that I took - a free-motion class, and a ruler-work class), as well as trying out the Q16 on a frame that Bernina had set up in the merchant's mall.

My ruler work panel - LOVED having a ruler to help with curves.

I was still debating about whether to get a table-top, or a frame, as of course working on the table top is so familiar to me but when I then went to Sewing With Passion in Invercargill after the symposium, to try their frame machine, which had the ruler platform set up on it, THAT sealed the deal - within about 30 seconds of using the ruler on the longarm frame, I was in love!

I have the 5ft Studio frame set up currently, and have got the 5ft extension still boxed up in the garage, ready for when I want/am ready to go bigger!  As part of the deal, the ladies threw in a ruler set and platform for me as a perk - I am very grateful. I haven't broken that open yet, as will first get some practice with simply using the handles and machine.

To start I've grabbed a length of a fabric from my stash that has a lot of lines (curves especially) for my to practice on - it's a fabric I don't really like much so am not precious about using it for practising. I've also got a couple of panels sitting in the cupboard that might be good first projects to try out.

Now, off back to my machine! 

And I will start saving up for Paris for my 60th!