Little Gracie

A few months ago I had the opportunity to get a Little Gracie II frame for FREE!!!  A lady no longer had the room for it and just wanted it to go to a new home.  Luckily my Florida room is big enough to accommodate the frame and my DH was understanding.  The frame has been sitting here for a few months taunting me to use it.  Last weekend my dear, sweet Mama surprised me and brought me down her Juki 98Q "on loan" so I could use it on the frame.  I was going to set up my machine but it only has a 7 or 9 inch throat so I wouldn't have had much room to quilt, the Juki has an 11" throat so at the most I get about 4" of quilting space, that is fine with me.

Sunday my DH went over the frame, tightened screws and did some maintenance on the frame, while studied YouTube videos on how to load the leader clothes, quilt top and backing.

I finally loaded the Juki in the carriage and was ready to sew but quickly ran into a conundrum.  The frame came with a Grace Speed Control which you hook up to your sewing machine and it will replace the foot pedal.  Well, I set it up correctly for the Juki and all it would do was trigger the thread cutting feature on the machine.  I tried putting the foot pedal on top of the carriage so I can use the handle controls but it blocks the thread, so until I can replace the Speed Control I have the foot pedal on the floor.  It's not the ideal set up but it works for now.

The first quilt I practiced on was a quilt for charity with a simple meandering design.  It was so much fun!!  My DH was even impressed with how fast the machine sewed!  The setup will be great for simple quilting on utility quilts and hopefully I'll get better at making some simple designs, but it won't be anything too fancy (I'll still have to quilt a few quilts with my checkbook).  For now though I'm happy.  Thanks Mom for "loaning" me the Juki!!!  And a huge thanks to my DH for supporting my habits, I mean hobby.  I'm looking forward to finally getting some quilt tops quilted.