Happy New Year

Hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season... I've spent a majority of mine, sitting at my sewing machine....My new sewing machine.....  Mike surprised me with the idea to buy a new machine..... (now really folks,  when your spouse asks you in a sewing machine store if you want a new machine, he better be serious, right?  LOL).   Actually, buying a new machine was nowhere on my radar, so when he asked that question and the sales clerk started showing me the newest and latest,  I was in shock. I took it for a test drive over sample after sample.... but before I actually took the plunge,  we came home and I did some research, reading blogs,  looking at the yahoo groups, just to make sure that I would be happy with the decision to get rid of my workhorse Juki 98 and my lower end Janome for the new Janome Horizon 7700.

Meet Ruby! She's beautiful, she's red,  and she's a gem! 

We've spent the better part of the last week, getting to know each other...  where is that  'scant 1/4 inch'
  on each foot?   what do all these buttons and dials do?  we did some piecing, actually lots of piecing as I worked on the 600 HST for Bonnie Hunters's mystery step 5... and then stiched them together into groups of 5 for step 6.   

Yesterday, I put my piecing aside and decided it was time for Ruby and I to do some quilting.  I have so many tops to get finished and out of here!  She quilted like a dream!  I love her three different FMQ feet.... the straight stitch automatic thing on the throat plate.... she is so smooth and quiet!   I learned that she is finicky about either bobbins, or the way thread comes off a cone... We had to have a little "meeting of the minds".  regarding some pink cone thread I was using for one section.  I had used some other cone thread earlier w/o any issues,  but I had also wound some bobbins on my sidewinder... so I haven't decided yet which was the bigger issue, but after going back to winding bobbins on the Janome,  a fresh needle and then winding some of the pink cone thread onto bobbins and using them like sideway spools, she was happy again... (maybe it was just new machine colic?)   We quilted happily along until 11 pm last night, when I ran out of the variegated thread I was using on the border, 1/2 way through the border!   Don't you just hate that?  The "target foot", allowed me to try echo quilting w/o doing any marking,  I think I'm going to like this feature, once I get my sideways straight motion going straighter...

Today, she and I effortlessly quilted for 3 hours w/o a single broken top thread, bumpy bottom tension, or needle mishap!   We'll put her through the binding test next.   I hear that some have had isssues going over bumpy seam intersections, so we'll test that.  I have the 1/4 "  auto feed foot, got it as a bonus with my machine.....