Clean Cup, Move Down!

Also the address for this blog, "Clean cup, Move Down!" seems to fit my life right now. If you recall in "Alice in Wonderland" during the Mad Hatter's tea party, Alice barely gets started on her tea, when the Mad Hatter or the March Hare exclaim, "Clean cup, move down!" Alice gets more and more frustrated. I can kind of relate. I do manage to get things finished, but unfortunately, lots of pressure gets put on my family in the process!

Quilts have been a tradition in my family. I have several quilts that my mother and grandmothers have made for me. I've tried my hand at quilting and have learned things along the way. (Mostly through trial and error and reading books. I have learned a lot.) A few months ago my Aunt Betty phoned my mother and challenged her to make a quilt. Aunt Betty was working on one called "My Grandmother's Dream." She was very excited about it. She sent Mom the instructions, and she began with the intent of making quilts for Jeff and Matt because they "are of marriageable age. " Shortly after, Jeff announced his engagement. Mother was well on her way to getting Jeff's quilt made, but I needed to make one too.

We only have one sewing machine here, which is actually my Mother's machine. My machine was in St. George, Utah at her home there. We obviously needed two machines if we were both going to be making quilts (and other sewing projects). My cousin, Lynette, who lives in Moapa, Nevada goes to St. George regularly and she was willing to get my machine, take it to UPS, have them package it and sent here to Oregon. She insured it for $1,000. We were excited to have two machines working on these big projects! A few days later the machine arrived, I unpacked it, and after close examination, it was obvious that the machine hadn't been packed carefully enough and it had been thrashed in shipping. The local Viking dealer informed me that it would be impossible to fix. One thing led to another and I ended up with a brand new Bernina! It is great! I haven't had a chance to take the classes to learn how to use the machine yet. I have figured out how to use what I needed on my own. It does some AWESOME things, including automatic needle-threading, which I haven't figured out yet?! CLEAN CUP, MOVE DOWN! The classes are coming up in February! The quilts got finished and they turned out great!