While it is not the 1st day of business, it is the 1st day of full time business.  Don’t have to worry about working for someone else, so now I can dedicate all my time (or at least all the time I want) to my business.  Yesterday, June 20, was my 1st day of working after I finished teaching (June 2nd) and came back from vacation (June 7-17).  And it was a pretty productive day.

Started bright and early (5am).  The reason for starting so early is my husband gets up that early (well he gets up around 3:30 or 4am), so I said now that I don’t have outside of the home commitments I want to try to see if I can work the same schedule as him.  SO I finally wrenched myself out of bed around 4:15 to  spend some time with him before he goes to work.  Figure this might work better for the summer anyhow as it is cooler in the morning so I won’t waste as much energy.  Did some ironing and then went outside to do some spray basting about 6.  Here are a few of the things I finally got basted.

This is 2 tablecloths that I purchased at a thrift store in Colorado while visiting my daughter and grandkids.  I really loved the print, thought it would be great for quilting around the motifs.  The pink one matched perfectly and while not the same size it will do.  Also had batting that fit just about perfectly.  I figure I will quilt this and then give it to my grand-daughter for a picnic quilt.

This is an embroidered dresser scarf I got at an antique shop.  Can’t wait to quilt it.

It is not perfect.  It has a few holes, so I backed it with a layer of muslin between it and the batting.  I’m thinking in those areas I will use pebbles and hopefully it will mask the holes.  If not, it is OK, I am just doing this for fun-my 1st vintage quilting.

I also basted a couple of muslin sandwiches to use for a ruler work demo I will be doing at our Modern Meetup at Sew & Vac on Saturday.  Didn’t take pictures as they were just a piece of muslin that I had marked a 9 block with a border on it.  And here is what I did with one of them.

And here are the rulers I used.

These are Fine Line long arm rulers by Accents in Design.  These are my all time favorite rulers.  I will be looking at teaching this sampler in the future.  These rulers can be used on domestic machines as well as long arms.  If you want more information or would like to learn just leave me a comment.

Here is a picture of another quilt I basted yesterday and actually got the ditching done (stitching in the seams or ditches).  This is also to show how I suspend the quilt in order to take some of the drag off so it kind of floats on the table and I don’t have to exert so much energy pushing and pulling it.  I bought 2 dog grooming arms and 2 lightweight plastic clamps.  It is very easy to change the position of the quilt.  Here are a few pictures of the bows I am adding to the baskets.

While yesterday was a very productive day.  Today was a little different.  Did not get up with my husband today, and did not do any quilting today.  I ended up at the endodontist getting a root canal.  That is OK, since I knew I needed the root canal, but thought I was just going to a consultation and they would schedule the procedure for later in the week.  Everything went well.  This was on the tooth that I broke a cusp off of on Mother’s Day in Colorado.  May was a month of going to the dentist about every week.  The tooth broke off low so they had to do crown lengthening surgery (which they didn’t ell me was surgery until the day before the procedure-which freaked me out a little.) Then of course I needed to go back the next week to take out the stitches.  The tooth was sensitive but not in pain, it was close to the nerve so they wanted to do a root canal now rather than after the crown was on (because then they would have to drill into the new crown possible breaking it).  My dentist thought it would be better to have the root canal done before going on vacation, but the endodontist was only in the office the day we were leaving (Bora Bora for 10 days.) After I did some research I was a little nervous about having this done right before leaving as I did not want to be in pain on vacation.  So I kept my appointment and talked to the Dr about my nervousness.  He said that he was hesitant to do it also as there are risks, the file could break off in the root, the tooth could break apart, etc.  Since I had no pain he felt I should not have any pain, so we decided to wait.  I was prepared with emergency dental cement (in case the temporary came off), emergency dental pain meds, loads of Advil and Tylenol.  Great news is that I went on vacation and had no pain.  But since the endodontist would not be in the office until the end of July (which I might be on another trip at that time) I decided to get a referral and get it done at another endodontist.  So far so good, numbness is gone now and it is a little sore but they said it is to be expected.  And even though I did not have any pain he said I did have some infection so am on antibiotics again (that is another story-the weekend before we left i ended up in the ER with a UTI-I have never had a UTI and hope to never have one again, it was awful).