Oh boy. Yikes! Back in September my husband bought me a Baby Lock, my first new sewing machine, as an anniversary gift. When I picked it out, I specifically told the sales gal that I wanted to be able to lower the feed dogs and use a free motion quilting foot. So she sold me a Crafter's Choice and a special foot, and I am just now getting around to trying it out -- and I'm doing it for the first time. Couldn't pick something easy, either -- it's an art quilt with lots of velvet front and back. Man! I had to plug in the foot pedal, since I can't take my hands off the thing for even a second if it's moving, and I'd gotten comfortable with the button control on/off. Anybody have any free-motion tips to share with a novice? It's not going too badly, after all -- I'm using a nice Sulky Blendables thread so the stitching on the front is mercifully buried in velvet -- you just get a sense of depth. Can see the fumbles on the back though...probably should have found a matching thread for the bottom, but oh well. Live n learn, right?

Greetings - I've been in the weeds at work, so I have not had much time to sew (except to construct some simple costumes for the Palm Sunday play.) In my travels though I have moments in which to work on my transit series. There's a show I'm curating to open in the fall, titled "In Transit," of artists exploring public transportation as a social justice issue. I hope to create some mixed media/cloth books of images and writing, so I'm working now to collect the visuals: bus stops, in all their daily, dirty glory. For more on this visit my blog, http://laptopconfessional.blogspot.com/