Welcome to a new week, everyone!

First of all, thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway for a copy of The Ultimate Guide to Machine Quilting! You all said such lovely things about the hop and about my work-- Thank you! And congratulations to our winner, Lynn T! Lynn, please email me at stringandstory (at) gmail (dot) com so we can get your book on its way!

Now, you may have noticed that a new hashtag titles this post. Just because the #MachineQuiltingBlogHop has come to a close doesn't mean we should all stop practicing! Each Monday, I'll share what quilting I've been up to and, as best I can, share a video each week about a different motif (I kept a list of all the ones y'all suggested in your Week 9 comments!). Just like with the #MachineQuiltingBlogHop, we can all use the hashtag on Instagram to show our work. And I'd love to feature y'all here from time to time, so don't be shy. Remember, practice makes progress!

Without further ado, I'd like to introduce Leopold the Longarm! He is a Tin Lizzie 18 and was generously donated to Quilts for Cure. Because he lives at my house, the donor has also given permission for me to use him generally. She's very excited that he will be used regularly and loved very much. Yesterday, we rented a van, picked him up in pieces, then I spent the whole afternoon getting him put back together. 

Honestly, the frame was bulky and time consuming, but the real kicker was getting him threaded. Can we all just take a moment to give a dirty look to the engineers who haven't figured out a less crazy way to do that?? Until I got it right, I had some cuh- RAZY eye lashing going on with the bobbin thread, but, with some help from Vicki, I got it sorted. 

I thought that starting on the longarm would be like going back to square 1 with my machine quilting skills. In reality, I can do all of my motifs pretty well. The difference, is that they are much larger than they were on my domestic. While they may never be quite as small as if I were working on my domestic, I know they will get smaller and more detailed, more precise, as I continue to practice. For now, though, I'm very excited that my practice piece can be bound and be an "accidental" baby quilt. I'm also very excited to load an #OperationSmiley quilt on tomorrow and get to work!