Don’t you love it when something clicks? 💡

And I am not talking about Click Buy Now! (Well, maybe…)

I know it’s been quiet on this blog for a while. May and June were busy, but good months. In May, my friend Kevin came for a few days, and we had a surprise guest—more on that near the bottom of the post. AND, Hubs retired at the end of May.

I have mentioned several times my desire to digitize quilting designs to stitch out on Ani, my Brother Luminaire. I’ve had her for just over a year now and had not embroidered anything on her. I have two platforms for embroidery digitizing—Hatch 3 by Wilcom, and Embrilliance’s Essentials and StitchArtist, Level 1. In March I signed up for classes in Kansas City with Lisa Shaw for the StitchArtist component of Embrilliance. 

And, I also started a new quilt. I determined the size of it, printed the image, and drew a grid on the printed image. From that point, I started pulling fabrics for it, and set about tracing each grid square. The original plan was to hot glue pieces to each square to make up the entire design (think mosaic-ish), then sew the appliquéd squares together.

The tracing of the approximately 70 squares (finishing at 4” square) flew by—I was enjoying the process. I cut out the first 4.5” square, appliquéd the fabric on it, and pinned it to the corresponding square on the image that was now on my design wall. Tada! That felt good. It took me an hour to get 3 squares on the design wall, and that's when I said, "Wait a minute..." And I stopped, because…

…I had more homework for the Embrilliance workshop and class that was scheduled for June 5-7–and that meant stitching out samples and creating a name tag. 

I know, it's a hot mess--but it stitched out great!

The inaugural embroidery stitch-out on my Ani

Finished name tag

So I was on a journey that month to see how much knowledge I could cram into this old, feeble brain and be able to guide my hands to get what's in my head into the application to make what I want work. Two weeks prior to the scheduled classes, I had to provide the instructor with files of what I have done and I had a feeling she would either ROFL or say, "Bless her heart..."  I thought to myself, I need to withdraw from the evening workshop for the advanced users because I don't know enough to say how high to jump. I sent her an email about my dilemma and, bless her heart, she said I should join them anyway. After watching a couple of videos specific to what I wanted to accomplish, the brain had the AHA moment and I was off to the races. It will take me awhile to master (if ever) because I can’t draw, but I’ll get there. 

Oh, and the classes were fabulous—lots of good energy, and the advanced class was more about what could be better about our designs—Lisa has a set of best practices that are easy to remember—plan it, digitize it, stitch it out, then go back to the design and go from there. I highly recommend anyone wanting training in Embrilliance to take her classes: https://sew-bubbles.com/education/ In fact, the classes were so great that I purchased the Enthusiast component and upgraded StitchArtist from Level 1 to Level 3. 

And so another life episode took place the last week in May when the Hubs’ sister called me and said she was coming up to surprise him for his birthday. What she didn’t know was that he was retiring the day after his birthday. I was so excited because we haven’t seen her in years and I knew this would be great medicine for each of us. She arrived the day before Memorial Day and we were successful in surprising the Hubs. That night we stayed up until midnight talking and catching up and spent the whole week just soaking up good vibes. We’ll take a vacation together later this year.

Aunt Robin with Jack, Emma and Dave

Birthday lunch for Tripp, Mary Jane and Phillip

We have had a great time watching all of the hummingbirds from our front porch.

The trip to Kansas City for the Embrilliance classes was invigorating and I’m happy we went. I was happy to get home, but a lot of that had to do with getting back to quilting and sewing and embroidering—in other words, back to my happy place. 

I have more to share soon, including finished quilts! I hope you have a Happy Independence Day and weekend. In the meantime, go make!