Plans and printers

So, I forgot to post yesterday! But I have an excuse. Tuesday morning right in the middle of printing shipping labels my printer died. I spent much of the day trying every hack I could find on the web to fix it but after several hours of work I had to give in a declare my 10 year old Canon dead. I give it credit, it lasted 3 times longer than any of the 3 previous HP printers.

So I went to pick up Mom for our quilt club meeting and decided to go buy a printer on the way back to my house.  All I'll say about that unfulfilling expedition is this. Local stores bemoan the fact that we prefer online shopping. Well if they want to fix that they need to think about their products and our needs a little better. A printer is something that always breaks at an inconvenient time and people usually need one right away. So if I were an electronics store I'd have those babies right up front and I'd make sure that some members of the staff actually knew something about them!

Our program Tuesday night was about our resolutions for 2020. I don't make resolutions but I occasionally make an attempt to clean up my language. I'm married to a sailor and sailors are nothing compared to restaurant workers. I picked my bad habit up from all of the years of waiting tables. I always fail to clean up my act but I do try. It's a good thing I didn't make that resolution  this year because my Mom can tell you that printer shopping would have broken that one into a million pieces.

I finally just called Canon and asked them which printer replaced the MX870 that I had loved. I need a rear tray that holds more than 1 piece of paper so I can feed in fabric sheets. I also need and ADF scanner and the ability to reduce and enlarge from the copier.

This is what I came home with and I spent yesterday morning setting it up before heading to the dye studio for the afternoon. The one cool new feature is that I can now print from my phone. 

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Now I'll get on to what I wanted to accomplish yesterday and that was to do some planning for projects over the next few weeks.

First up, veterans quilts! I stopped taking tops in October so the Country School Quilters have been building up a quilt top inventory. There were 8 more than this stack! Other longarmers took 8 and I brought home this stack. I had a few already so I think I have about 14 to quilt over the next couple of months in between other projects. First I have 2 that Mom made and then....

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I'm going to quilt this old UFO. Anyone remember Barbara Brackman's Grandmother's Choice? I made 2 and after they were done I realized that I had made one for each of my Grandmother's. I finished the first one, Lura's Choice, and this one has languished mostly because I don't like what I did with the borders and can't come up with a quilting plan.

Last month my uncle died and I've decided to finish this and take it to my cousin at the memorial service in 2 weeks. It's going to get a swirly pantograph so I can get it done in time and I hope she will like it and use it.

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Then I decided that I'm going to do something with these. I appliqued these blocks a LONG time ago. My friend, Becky, and another guild member, Dot Holloway, taught me how to applique and I practiced on these blocks. Originally I thought I'd make a quilt from these but I'm not at all inspired by them. Well, you know what that means. Placemats!

I had put aside all of the fabrics that I used in the applique so I'm cutting then into strips to frame these blocks. 

I do have a new project I want to start soon but I'll wait until Ian and Laura go home. We are easily sharing my sewing room now but if I pull out my symmetry fabrics for the next project things could get rough in here! These projects will keep me busy enough and I always have quilting time in the basement.