Well, oh boy, did we ever take a deep dive yesterday. Bob signed us up to attend the APQS Roadshow in Hendersonville, NC. For about 10 years, Bob and I have been talking about someday purchasing our own Longarm Quilting machine. Bob loves to see my finished quilts and wishes I could do the quilting at home on my machine.

After completing my quilt tops, if they are a sizeable quilt, I send them out to a longarm quilting friend in Kentucky, and she works her magic creating a beautiful quilting design on the quilt, batting, and backing sandwich, then she sends it back to me and I add the finished binding. It’s been a great relationship, and it will hopefully continue. I have a lot I can learn from her.

I’m fascinated by the job prospects of Longarm Quilters. I’ve spoken to a number of them locally and they are very busy. Some of them have a barn or large 3 car garage that they have converted into their working studio, and they have multiple quilts being quilted at once robotically with computers and built in designs. It’s really amazing to watch in action.

After looking at at least a dozen of the top brands of Longarm Quilting Machines, Bob and I were convinced that someday we’d own an APQS Millie. That is their top-of-the-line longarm machine.

So, yesterday, we attended the APQS Roadshow in Hendersonville, NC and met Sheridan Kay, who owns her own APQS quilting shop and is hosting the show. Boy, does she ever have the setup!

We learned about all the machines and how they compare to one another, and we had an opportunity to try them out for ourselves. Amazing is all I can say! You only need two fingers to maneuver the machine across the quilt. In the sample quilt sandwiches she had set up on all the machines, we were able to play around and get the hang of it. I was even able to write “Big Bear” in cursive easily. Who knew.

Yes, Bob and I were impressed. Very impressed. This was his hope for his retirement (Seriously! I’m not kidding!) that he would be in his overalls and barefoot doing all the creative design quilting on all my quilt sandwiches – and hopefully get so good that he can confidently quilt the quilts of others for a fee. Not bad, eh?

What I didn’t expect, was to walk out of that roadshow having purchased a Demo APQS Freddie machine, deluxe 12 foot table frame, and a few more goodies. Don’t ask what it all cost. I’m still on the verge of a stroke because of it. But, that makes us all the more determined to get that baby up and humming in our new home in the mountains.

They will be delivering it to our Apartment garage around the first week of December – in a semi. Yes, you heard that right. That frame is Enormous!!!

Since we saved thousands of dollars and purchased a Demo machine, we had to take delivery sooner rather than later. Oh well, it will be okay in the garage we have here in these apartments until we can move into our new home.

By the way, to any quilter who might be interested in knowing – The Freddie is the exact same machine as the Millie. Only difference is that the Millie has a button you can push to regulate straight stitches, and it has a thread cutter. Umm – well, so does the Freddie, the only difference is that Freddie’s straight stitch regulator is a manuel adjustment, and since I would never use the thread cutter and would prefer to use a pair of small scissors to cut the thread, I could care less about the thread cutter. Why this justifies a difference in price by a few thousand dollars has me stumped. I figure it is all Marketing. Marketing. Marketing. And, since I’m not stupid, and neither is Bob, we purchased the Freddie. It’s a wonderful machine!

The final setup will be in our walk out basement. Fun! Can’t wait!

And just to make things more interesting, I purchased a domain name today for this new business, and I’m building another website since I’ve got so good at this with Raisin Toast. The new site is Bearfoot Mountain Quilts. Yes, you read that right – Bearfoot – not Barefoot. It will eventually be at bearfootmountainquilts.com. Pretty cool, don’t you think?

The beautiful quilt pictured in the Header of this post is the “Shine Quilting Pattern” that you can find at Suzy Quilts