Working Girl

I didn't have to teach today because we had parent-teacher conferences all week so today was our comp day for that.  I had decided I was going to treat it like a working girl day for my quilting business.  I worked on my competition quilt and finished piecing it this morning. I then went to our local quilt shop, All About Quilts, and purchased the backing for it. They have delightful and abundant extra wide backings for those large quilts you make.

After I finished up at the local quilt shop I went and visited the insurance man.  (See more in the next paragraph.)  After I got home I went to work on loading my latest Quilt of Valor (QOV) quilt onto the machine.  It definitely called for that pesky star pattern I've been working on mastering for what seems years now. OK just several months but it's definitely more challenging that I would have imagined when I started out. I worked all afternoon and a little bit this evening but I got it finished.

A star on the back.  I don't have a ton of thread in stock but today what I did have matched up perfectly!

This QOV had a nice embroidered Welcome Home block. I had to improve as I quilted around it.

A close up of the quilting on the front.

Today I took the plunge and took this little hobby from pleasure to business.  When I first bought my machine my insurance man, Brian, told me as long as I was using my machine for a hobby it was covered under our home owners insurance. But as soon as I started taking money for my quilting it would not be covered and if something happened to my machine I was going to be suffering a loss of a lot of cash.  Lots of tears.  So up to this point I'd only being doing my QOV quilts and quilts for friends, for experience not cash.  The past couple of weeks I've had several people contact me about quilting their quilts.  I didn't even know some of them.  So after thinking it over I decided I was ready.  I called Brian, sent him a few photos of my machine and paid him the money to insure my longarm machine for business purposes.
This evening I had my first customer come over and drop off her quilt.  She'd heard of me through a gal who took my quilting class (piecing) a few weeks ago.  It's a small baby quilt she made for her daughter.  On her way out she recognized our wedding picture of us riding our bicycle from our wedding.  She had worked as a manager at Varsity Donuts (I LOVE Varsity Donuts!!!) and had seen our picture from there.  Small world.
I learned several important things about working for myself today.  Yes it's nice to be your own boss and set your own hours. However, if you start working late (say 9AM) you end up working later (say 7PM).  So the lesson of the day was yes it's nice to set your own hours but the work still has to be finished either way.  Hummm...Lesson learned.
So my day of being an independent working girl went really well.  I got my work done.  I was able to do several different tasks and still accomplish them all.  I don't think I would have done it much differently.  I know things won't always be so smooth but it was nice to have a smooth start.  So if you have any quilts lying around that need to be quilted, I'm open for business!

One last photo of the QOV I worked on today.