Caps for Sale

Remember that book from childhood?  Caps for Sale was one of my favorites - along with What Shall I Put in the Hole That I Dig? As I got older I would read it to younger siblings (and anyone else within earshot) with much more ribald interpretation. I still giggle when I remember some of the things we put in that hole to see if it would grow a ------ tree!

In an attempt to generate some income I decided to make up some hats and put them in our shop.  Nothing fancy, just the kind of thing to break up the hot sun but not the bank.  I had a lot of batiks in my stash left over from a big quilt project so it was nice to use up odds and ends. The ones for the babies were a LOT of work and while I'll never recoup my investment of time, it does pay for the fabric and helps me downsize my stash. It also gives me something productive to sew and that, more than anything else, seems to soothe my ever present anxieties.   It comes with the added bonus of listening to books on tape while I work. I check out digital books from my local library so there is no end of things to explore. Right now I'm listening to The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Volume 3: Defender of the Realm, 1940‑1965.       

 I'm not a WWII aficionado but I'm fascinated with Churchill and completely in love with well written prose. No one writes like the English. I've been on a Jane Austen tear for about 3 weeks and find myself using expressions like, "My dear you must prepare yourself" when I tell my husband I have cleaned out the refrigerator and saved us all from death by salmonella and/or rotted food.

Sewing also helps me feel productive when when "PPP Down" is the only thing that  registers on my computer screen when I'm trying to find out why I'm off line ....AGAIN.  I have learned to reboot modems, re-initialize, delete setups and re-do them, and taken a ton of screenshots with dates to prove it all. I've learned you can't shame Verizon in to useful customer service or get an acknowledgement that it is THEIR problem. They are happy to have me pay for a repairman come out to my house to check their line. Inside the house - it's my problem and I'll pay for that. Outside? That's on you, Verizon.  My husband has an aversion to AT&T (his people invented the vendetta, you know) but I'm ready to pull the plug.  I'll just say, "In vain have I struggled. It will not do. You must allow me to tell you how much I abhor Verizon. My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever."  Frankly, I'd like to put Verizon in that "hole that I dig" and see if it grows a )#&*)@(*#&$  tree. Meanwhile, I plod along and take files on a flash drive to computers at work, or work on my iPad on a friend's wifi. (Comcast, in case you were wondering.) I'm just thankful my Bernina doesn't need an internet connection to work, but if it did I know Bernina would have some rockin' customer service!

The Mystery of the Bernina Walking Foot

HELP!  I've got this thingie that has another thingie and I can't for the life of me figure out how this should fit on my Bernina 1090 and operate as a walking foot.  Even the good people at @berninausa can't seem to fathom how this thing works.  They said it fits the same way the new one does, but mine doesn't have a....um....."receptacle" for the machine to poke into. (Think male/female parts.)  Here are a couple of pictures I shot with my iPod touch (my digi camera is MIA....)

[gallery link="file" columns="2"]

Anyone have a clue?  ANYONE?  It has a little arm that should go up and down if it were somehow connected to something, but it doesn't have the little "claw" at the end of it to hook on to your needle bar.  It also has a long, l-shaped arm thingie that somehow hooks in to it and lets you use that to measure the distance between your quilting lines so you don't have to mark up your fabric.  I really want to use a walking foot in my quilting SOMEDAY, but I have no idea how this thing works.  I know my mom used it, but alas - that is one part of the enormous cargo of information that sailed when she did.  I've tried using my MOMStar but that doesn't work either. Maybe I'll make a vodka and Squirt and see if I can channel her.  (That reference was for my sisters. xxxx)

ANYONE?

Just Not Feelin' it Today

Sometimes you wake up with a gray cloud over your head and sometimes you wake up IN a gray cloud.  Nothing drastic,  just an overabundance of crap.  Here is a sample:

1. Got a phone call from my NEW Bernina repair dude.  The same Bernina I spent almost $300 on getting it cleaned, the motherboard rebuilt, etc. just a few months ago is now going to cost me an additional $200 plus to get it CLEANED AND REPAIRED AGAIN.  The first dealer (who shall remain mercifully nameless until I really snap) did not wish to honor their warranty. It's a building-the-pyramids long story,  but suffice to say I'll never go back.  New Bernina dude talked my ear off telling me about all the bits and pieces and mechanisms that were maladjusted, and the fact that there was OIL AND LINT INSIDE THE MACHINE (after I brought it home the first time I used it less than half an hour before it malfunctioned) so I'm feeling like I got royally fleeced by the first repair dudes......


2. After I hung up from the 2nd Bernina dude, I burst into tears.  My husband gave me a beautiful, mushy card for Christmas that had two crisp $100 bills inside it - and I cannot for the life of me find it.  I am sick to my stomach.  It was truly a gift worthy of "The Gift of the Magi" love, and I was already SO upset about it -  so when Bernina Dude II said, "$200" I just wanted to sit on the floor and weep.  So I did.  (Except we had company for supper so I ran into the far room and had a private bit of weeping.)


3. Youngest sister spent the weekend with my Dad (in pseudo hospice) and reading her emails and reports just left me so sad, angry, bitter and heartbroken.  I have never had my faith and beliefs so tested - and I'm a freakin' cancer survivor, for pete's sake.


4. We are in the first 1/4 of a 2 day blizzard, so I lose another day of work tomorrow (most likely) and will feel that sting in the paycheck.

See what I mean?  And in the middle of all of this, Shannon from Monkey Dog Quilts has so very kindly gifted me with a "Stylish Blogger Award" !  How nice is that?   I told her I don't feel very stylish today, sitting here in my sweats and my hair pulled back with a headband.  So before I can share 8 things about myself and award it to 8 other bloggers, I'm just going to chill out and pull myself out of this funk.  Either that, or I'll make a pot of coffee and eat some bar cookies. Better yet - I'll give you the recipe.  These things are like heroin  so don't say I didn't warn you.  It is one of my favorite recipes from childhood - thanks, Mom!

BUTTERFINGER BARS

Mix together in a 9 by 13  (or whatever is close) pan:

1. 4 cups of uncooked oatmeal (the real stuff, not the instant garbage)


2. One cup of brown sugar


3. One half cup of white sugar

Melt one cup of butter (two sticks, just go with it) and pour it over the mixture, stirring it around as you go.  Then press that mixture into the pan, bake it for 10 to twelve minutes at 350.  Let it cool.

Frost with one cup of chocolate chips (melted gently in a saucepan) and add 3/4 cup of  CHUNKY peanut butter to the warm chocolate - blend together, then pour it over the cooled base.  Chill and devour.   IMPORTANT:  There are 8 ounces in a cup, and 12 ounces in a bag of chocolate chips.  I just throw in the whole bag, melt it,  and add an extra dollop of chunky peanut butter.  You get a nicer ratio of chocolate to base.  ( If you use  the word "ratio" it makes it science,  so it's okay - no guilt.)

Enjoy.  You can self-medicate with prescription drugs or you can self medicate with chocolate.  If you think chocolate is bad for you,  ask Charlie Sheen how it's all  workin' out for him......

Deja Pallooza

Okay.  Not 30 seconds after I sat down at my Bernina to work on my iBuddy tote bag, the machine stopped working.  Specifically, the needle stopped going up and down.  The machine hummed, the feed dogs fed - but nadda from the needle.  WHASSUP WITH THAT?  After a frantic phone call to the Bernina place that just did the brain transplant, cleaning and repair, I found out it was a "mechanical issue" and was not covered in my 6 month "all work, etc. " warranty.  Seriously.  SERIOUSLY?  I'll give you seriously - I'm seriously pissed off.  I need to get it fixed, but I'm shopping for a new repair place.

Back to the drawing board - back to my cherry pallooza tribute wall hanging.  It's all hand sewing, so I guess I can do that without a machine, right?  Rats. I was SO in the mood.

Swiss Cheese Memory

As much as I wish this was about my fond recollection of swiss cheese, it is not.  Something very strange is happening and I do not like it one bit.

Yesterday, after an almost summer-long hiatus from my sewing room, I sat down to my freshly cleaned and repaired Bernina to see how quickly I could get back in the swing of things and finish up some quilts. I decided to make up a few potholders to warm up my skills and found out..... I was all over the map.  I kept pushing the wrong place on the Bernina to get my back stitch,  I had to thread the bobbin twice to get it running smoothly, and all in all was just amazed at the lack of continuity in my head.  I've had this machine for about 6 or 7 years and I know it cold.  Or so I thought. After  finishing up 3 homely potholders (no worries, they get used and stained regardless) I decided to finish up some pin cushions from an old silk log cabin quilt that had seen better days.  I had cut the usable squares earlier and started trimming them with black ribbon to stabilize the edges.  Jeebus, what a mess.  That ribbon was slippery and I had to wrap my head around which presser foot to use, feed dogs, etc. and at the end of the episode I cut the thing up  only to  start over after trimming my nasty edges.  All the Fray Check in the world couldn't save it,  poor thing.

I might blame this on the infernal summer heat baking my brains to a level of irreparable damage.  Or, I could just chalk it up to being rusty.  But I never choose the glass that is half full - it is always half empty. (And in grave danger of being empty at any second.) I am so afraid that this is me,  aging.  I'm 52 and much too young for this crap.....but when does "aging"  actually start? I know it will happen eventually - but am I at the threshold of that "eventually"?  I used to pride myself on the number of balls I could keep in the air and nail them all accurately and quickly.  I could dispatch any number of things in a day.  Now it seems like I look upon the increasing number of  tasks  as an additional challenge to my sanity.

Remember the Ed Sullivan show?  There used to be a  guy on there who spun plates on top of 6  foot poles.   He would start one spinning, then pick up a pole and start the 2nd plate spinning.  Then he would run back to the first, give it a spin, spin the 2nd again, and put up a 3rd plate.  Pretty soon he'd have 8 or 9 plates spinning around and he would run back and forth,  frantically giving each of them another spin just as they would wobble precariously.  (Behind this, the orchestra would be playing the Sabre Dance to add to the drama.)  It was wonderful to watch back then, but not so wonderful now. I feel like I'm the one trying to keep all those plates  spinning, and I'm afraid I'm breaking a few of them.

Food for Thought

Whatever you say,  do, create, paint, weave,  whatever --   this is today's food for thought:

I've been a hard worker all my life, but 'most all my work has been the kind that 'perishes with the usin'," as the Bible says.  That's the discouragin' thing about a woman's work....if a woman was to see all the dishes that she had to wash before she dies, piled up before her in one pile, she'd like down right then and there. I've always had the name 'o bein' a good housekeeper, but when I'm dead and gone there ain't anybody goin' to think  o'  the floors I've swept, and the tables I've scrubbed, and the old clothes I've patched, and the stockin's I've darned...But when one of my grandchildren or great-grandchildren sees one o' these quilts, they'll think about Aunt Jane, and, wherever I am,

I'll know I ain't forgotten.

Aunt Jane of Kentucky,  ca. 1900 - from the book Anonymous Was a Woman, 1979, Mirra Bank, St. Martin's Press.

Reality Bites....Back

[gallery link="file" columns="2" orderby="ID"]

Well, this is what happens when you house sit for a month.  Our  creeping ivy has become galloping ivy.  It is also a bone of contention - I love it, my husband hates it.  (He should sand blast and paint the patio of he wants to get me on board, I'm just sayin'.)

All of that,  a dusty house, and the return to non-central air  conditioning are looming like a veritable sword of Damocles.  Tonight  is our last night over at the house-sitting house and we are celebrating with take out lobster rolls for supper.  It's a Thursday special at a local restaurant and we figured - why mess up the kitchen again?  We'll just eat lobster rolls and soak up the cool.  I came home for a quick shower (hey, I'm a girl and all my junk is here) and check email.  I've also got to find a little hand sewing to take back with me for one more afternoon of movie watching, hand sewing and at about 4PM EDT, one last, great, epic  indulgent nap on the world's greatest napping couch, under my woobie - one of Mom's quilts.  It does not get much better than that.
My two Christmas cathedral window's projects are each missing a tooth (who counts?) so I've got to stitch up a couple of foundations (made easier by my repaired, cleaned , faster, smoother Bernina) and bring them with me back to the "summer cottage," as we have been calling it.

Sigh.

Hi Honey, I'm Home!

Look what I brought home from the doctor today - my Bernina!  She is still sitting in the front entryway, I can't lug her upstairs without doing some serious bodily harm so I'll have Joe do it when he gets home.  He is at his class reunion (about the bazillionth, I think. I don't do class reunions - I've never even been to one of my own. Meh.) I don't think he'll be home late. He sees his classmates all the time - his umbilical cord will not stretch over the A. Piatt Andrew bridge. He has lived  in Gloucester his entire life.  I'm talkin'  HE HAS HAD THE SAME PHONE NUMBER FOR HIS ENTIRE LIFE.   It boggles my mind.  Me?  I'm  so filled with wanderlust I could explode. I am  so ready to move somewhere new.

Anyway, I can't wait to thread the machine and fire up the old girl and listen to her hum.  It has been a remarkably productive break, one that forced me to finally  venture in to applique - and I love it.  I'm excited to finish up some dangling  projects though, as there is nothing more satisfying than sitting down at a finely tuned sewing machine and just blazing through to the finish line.  Hopefully I'll have some completed things to obsess over soon because I've taken the pledge to finish up three specific projects before I begin anything else new.  (A girl can dream.)  You heard it here first.

Best Birthday Surprise Ever!

Guess who just got a phone call from the Bernina dealer with the news that my baby is back, repaired, and ready to come home?    Woo hoo!

The NASCAR of Quilting

The wait for the Bernina repair has begotten a  palooza-monster.  I've got enough cherries made for my wall hanging and I could stop - but I'm still in the zone.  By "in the zone" I mean I can whip a basting stitch around a 1 inch circle, yank it over a mylar template, pull the thread tight and cut the cord in record time.  Kind of  the equivalent of a NASCAR pit crew -  or maybe it's a rodeo calf roping thing - except I don't  pull the cord and jump up and throw my hands up in the air.  (Or yell, "Boogedy boogedy boogedy, let's go racing boys!")

Until I get the leaf pattern for Mrs. McGills Cherries drafted and cut, I wanted to keep going with this newfound talent.  I have some shades of solid purple  in my stash (for the day when I would appliqué a grapevine quilt I saw on Martha's Vineyard about 15 years ago) and that day has apparently arrived.  I'm now in the  purple-palooza zone.  My quilting Sherpa Debbie has schooled me on Mettler thread weights for appliqué and I have the background fabric all ready to go.

I'm feeling much less separation anxiety about the Bernina, too.

Design Wall Monday - Sort Of

When I'm surfing quilt blogs, I have noticed many of them feature a "Design Wall Monday" thingie. I've always thought that was an interesting way to start the week - taking a look at what you are currently working on, exploring options, etc.  Then I went in to my sewing room and looked at my design wall and realized that while mine is not the conventional quilter's design wall, it serves the same purpose.

There are all kinds of things on my design wall.  I have blocks I've attempted, first shots at paper piecing, some old blocks that I just love to look at, pictures, mementos and all kinds of things that inspire me, make me think about color, and make me laugh.  There is a picture of my mother on there, one my DAD printed out and sent to me when I brought home her Bernina.  At the bottom, he typed up this little note that says, "NO JO, I TOLD YOU TO BACK STITCH IT ON THE BACK OF THE MATERIAL FIRST!!!!!  JEEZ, DO I HAVE TO SHOW YOU EVERYTHING???????"  How amazing is that.  This man knew his wife,  he knew me, and he knew exactly what she would say to me.

My design wall is wonderful composite of things and people I love.  Having Mom up there keeps me on track, she channels her thoughts about what I am making. (We disagree a lot, but that is par for Mom.  She still thinks my 12th grade Dorothy Hamill haircut is the one I should be wearing today.  She also thinks I should wear lipstick. )   Dad is up there too - on the lower portion there is a picture of him when he opened the store in Nebraska sometime around 1969 or 1970.  He's so young - and so handsome. And so smart.  It is thee most inspiring design wall ever.

PS - Father's Day is this Sunday - tell your Dad (wherever he is) how much you love him.

Yo to the Yoyo - Yo to BP

Cherrypalooza is rapidly becoming yoyopalooza.  However, I have an interesting twist that might satisfy Grace AND enable me to retain my sanity,  so I got that goin' for me, which is nice.  The Bernina is still on its way to the motherboard repair shop, but I received a lovely postcard today:

This is a link worth checking out:  If It Was My Home shows you just how enormous the oil spill is by superimposing it on a map of where you live.  Like I needed something else to keep me awake at night - this oil spill is going to have such long-lasting and far reaching effects it makes my head explode.  And not in the good way.

EDIT: For some reason,  I have the uncanny ability to find typos and weejits AFTER I publish my blog update.  What is that all about?

With the Help of Amazing Grace

Grace Snyder is my quilting idol. I am unabashedly a groupie.  I even have some of the Salem China company dishes that inspired the Flower Basket Petit  Point quilt - the holy grail of quilts.  Seriously.  There is plenty about her on the internet, but if you want to get the real story you must read No Time On My Hands.    Even if you aren't in to history, the story of this woman's life and what she accomplished is inspiring and amazing.

I've had the book Nebraska Quilts and Quiltmakers for many years and have always enjoyed looking at Grace's quilts in that book.  The one that really GETS me is Mrs. McGill's Cherries.  It's gorgeous, it's timeless, and my Mom's maiden name was McGill - so, total sign from God, right?  As if.

Yesterday I skated out of work to get to the Fabric Corner in Arlington, Massachusetts.   Yes, it is a schlep from Lowell.  Yes, they were having a sale, and my quilting sherpa Debbie raves about the place.  So I checked it out - and it was terrific.  I got there about 1/2 hour before closing time, but managed to scope out the place and establish it in my head as a "definitely go back to" resource.  I also ran smack dab into a bolt of Kona cotton CHINESE RED.   "Oh heavens," I thought, "these would make the most beautiful cherries....."  About $14 later, I left the store with the red (and a nice sold green) and decided to take a whack at my own cherry tree. I'm not sure if it will end as a single block (probably) or a wall hanging, but as long as the Bernina is out of commission, I need some focused hand sewing and this might just be IT.  Wish me luck - I'll need it.

Shut My Mouth Wide Open!

So I'm at work today, dealing with the auditors going up my colon looking for toxic  bookkeeping practices from the last fiscal year, dealing with the "will you print" requests from co-workers (I have mad computer printing skills & have tamed the mega-copier to be my bitch), along with   various and assorted other stuff that happens at a chronically understaffed institution.  I had just called Eddie, my Bernina dude, and given him the green flag to send my Bernina motherboard to the hinterlands to be rebuilt and was feeling a little down and out, to tell the truth.

Then it happened.

Brianna, our wonderful curatorial intern, came flying down to the main floor of the museum offices and said (and I quote), " I am not f-ing with you, come upstairs NOW."   I had no idea what was up but I knew she meant business. I skated upstairs to the workroom where Brianna and Laura were doing incoming condition reports on some broderie perse quilts for our next exhibit. Spread out on the table was a lovely, contemporary broderie perse quilt  (that just means it was done recently, as opposed to being an antique) that stopped me cold.

IT HAD MY FABRIC.

My fabric that I found in my stash clean-out that I talked about in No More Faux Bro. The exact same fabric! I nearly fell over, giggling and squealing and gobsmacked by the coincidence. Brianna was there when I brought in my fabric earlier that week, and had seen my plans for attempting a broderie perse wall hanging.  She was so tickled to see it on the exhibit quilt, and told me that it was made by a quilter in (I think) Washington state.  I'll get pictures if I can get her permission, and show you what she did with the fabric.  Amazing!  It was made circa 1994, so that is a good way of dating my "found" fabric!

I love how the universe just balances out sometimes.  I was completely underwater with the demands of the day - and then that quilt showed up.  I'm taking it as a sign to press on with the hand applique embroidery and see what happens. Until then, bon voyage, Bernina - you are  off  to heaven only knows where  to the mother ship repair shop.  Don't forget to write.....

Bernina Blues

Gloom, despair and agony. The Bernina 1090 is in the shop getting a cleanup, and the Bernina dude called my house today to leave a message.

That is never good.

It was too soon for it to be ready to be picked up, so I knew there were problems. I played back the message and heard that problem one was a switch that would cost about $29 to replace.  No problem!  The second - the motherboard was a little toasted, unable to regulate stitch length....ever again.   I was a little relieved, because I thought it was me monkeying around with my machine and unable to reset it properly.  Then the relief passed, and the realization that it is a failing motherboard set in.  He wants to take it out - send it to BERNINA - and have it rebuilt.

CRAP.   CRAPCRAPCRAP.

If it took me 5 weeks to get a freakin' needle clamp screw, how long is it going to take to get a motherboard rebuilt?  It's going to run me about $200 (ouch) and I haven't found out if he'll warranty the work.   I am honked.  I have a quilt to finish that is about ONE YEAR overdue.  I've got 2 projects spread out on the guest bed and I want them DONE AND MOVED.

The Bernina was my mother's machine, and I have such a sentimental attachment to it - I'd never let it go.  I even hauled the little dealie my dad built for it all the way from Nebraska to Massachusetts. It has their karma all over it - it has Mom's love of quilting  embedded inside the machine, and my dad's love of my mother infused in  the custom-built sewing desk/table.

I just want it to WORK.  Nothing fancy, just SEW.  HERE.   NOW.

I am going outside to cut some herbaceous peonies and then come in and open a bottle of wine.

CRAP.

No Faux Bro!

That is the name of my next project.  Since the Bernina is off getting it's 10 thousand mile checkup,  I needed some hand sewing to keep me occupied.  Additionally, since we're all aflutter with the beautiful broderie perse quilts coming in to the museum for the next exhibit,  I thought it might be interesting to try one myself.  The true sign-from-God came when I found this piece of fabric during my Schooled by my Stash  excavation.  It isn't as O R A N G E as it looks  -   for some reason my camera takes poetic license with color.  Anyway, I'm nervous as heck cutting it up, but as my  Yoda & Sherpa quilting guide Debbie explained to me, "Well, you can just sew it back together, you know...."

So I'm cutting it up in to bits and trying to arrange it so that it will look like a beautiful little tree coming out of an elegant pot.  The background color is a burnt orange nubby lovely, but now I'm thinking I might put it on a cream muslin background and use the burnt orange for pieced borders. This,  my very first attempt at broderie perse, will be a wall hanging when it grows up. Since I am  not going to fuse it or use machine applique, it will truly be a "no faux bro" project.  I figure by the end of it I'll either love or hate needle turned applique.  Either way,  it is one quilt I'll get to take of my bucket list.

[gallery link="file"]

Schooled by my Stash

The Bernina (sporting a fine new needle clamp screw) is off to the experts for a long overdue tune-up, clean-out, fixy-uppy.  I have bowed to pressure (and the sound of a clunky bobbin case) and made up my mind to get it back in top form.  I have three projects that need to be finished, and the machine is not firing on all 8 cylinders.  I packed it up, placed it near the stairs (so Joe can carry it down and schlep it to my car) and turned and took a good look at my sewing room.

UGGGHHH.

It was a mess. I have a little bit of an organizational sickness thingie, but you would not know it by looking around. I set to work "filing" fabrics in their color coded tubs, collecting odds and ends, finding a home for Ebay upholstery bits (I have a thing for Scalamandre) and reviewing my UFO's (not as bad or as many as I thought).  By the time I finished working my way through the entire mess, I had the uneasy realization that I have........ fabric I had forgotten I purchased.  Fabric I really loved - woo hoo!  Fabric I had not seen in ages.  Crushed walnut shells to make pincushions with - wool roving for felting.  The amount of forgotten muslin (the gift of  a friend, long story) was overwhelming.  Yards and yards of muslin.

I was planning on doing a little fabric shopping after I dropped off the Bernina.  Guess what - I'm not.  I have a lot of lovely stuff, and I am content with what I have.  It is all tidy and folded and looks wonderful.  I have been schooled by quilters, schooled by my Mom, and now I have been schooled by my stash.  It was a marvelous lesson.

TAH FREAKIN' DAH!

The Porsche needle clamp screw has arrived.  Opening ceremonies for the application of the screw to the Bernina have been postponed as it is close to 90 degrees here today, and  my sewing room (as the rest of my house) does not have central air.  I need a clear head and a cool, steady eye to get this thing in there correctly.  Meanwhile, I shall rejoice in my good fortune and thank the team of Sherpas that ascended remote peaks in the distant hemisphere to locate the precious metal used in the forging of this marvelous instrument.  (Okay, so heat makes me sarcastic. Sue me.)

I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

I have been reduced to the status of "visitor" in my own sewing room.  I broke the canvas needle during some overzealous stitching of my basket project, and now this - the Porsche needle clamp screw  is AWOL. The only thing left to do now is sort out fabrics, tidy up the fabric containers, reorganize my cutters and templates and (shriek!) maybe vacuum.  Is this quilting?  I think NOT.

The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Screw!

Hey !   Whine a little on your blog, call a Bernina dealer in the area and POOF!   The Porsche screw is on  the way!  Schwing!