Keeping my fingers crossed

It's been a while since my last entry. I have been researching trying to find a long arm quilter who can quilt text inside one of the borders of my quilts. I tried someone with a Compuquilter Long Arm and that didn't go very well. The lettering was skewed and they could not keep the phrase inside the border. That was a disappointing experience. I went through a period of having a defeated attitude.

While in NH, I stumbled on another quilter. I couldn't believe my eyes. She had a Gammel Long Arm machine and attached to it was an Intelliquilter. The Intelliquilter is basically a computer that is wired into your long arm so you can digitize your designs. I asked if she could text and she said YES. Hope is on the rise. I dropped off one of my prototype quilt tops and she is practicing on it. As it turns out, she has a group of quilters that come to her shop and they all have breast cancer. So she is going to ask each person if they had a quilt made for them what phrase or words would they want quilted in the border. She will practice with these phrases and learn the process of fitting the words inside the border. If she is successful and I hire her, this project could get very big and she may want to start thinking of help. She told me she already has that covered. WOW! She sounded very optimistic.

So I am keeping my fingers crossed while she is clearing her schedule to work on the sample top. I told her I have 70 quilt tops ready to be quilted and bolts of fabric for my next 100 quilts. Her eyes started to glaze over. I shared with her that my goal is to sell 500 quilts a year. That way I can donate $30,000 to medical research, prevention and finding cures. We were both very excited! I left her store with a skip to my step.