The past few weeks have been tough on the body.  I (with Scott’s help) have been sanding and painting Lady Olenna’s 14′ frame, including rollers.  We set up the frame outside so that we could sand and paint the rollers while being able to spin them around.  This made life much easier.  As you can see in these photos, the frame had a lot of rust on it from where the original leaders had been glued to the black painted rollers.  I believe these rollers (perhaps the whole frame) had spent some time outside, or at least in a non-climate controlled environment.  Of course, once the rust and paint was sanded off, the bars were subject to rusting again the next morning from the humidity and dew that we have so much of here in Alabama.  A sanding of the new rust and then a coat of primer put that to a stop and then it was just a matter of painting and waiting for it to dry.

While mornings and evenings were spent outside sanding and painting, during the hottest part of the day, I worked inside on rearranging my sewing studio (aka the original one car garage) to make room for her installation.  Arranging and rearranging are actually two of my favorite things to do, so I have been quite the happy camper these days. all the fabric on the west wall had to be moved to the east wall.  This made room for the sewing and cutting area to be moved to the west wall.  Please forgive the less than glamorous self portraits in the following shots.

Finally dry, it was moving day.  This is Gabriel, one of my nephews.  He was on hand to do a majority of the heavy lifting.  I know I have said that this frame is HUGE, but I don’t think I have mentioned how heavy the individual pieces are.  One of the heaviest rails weighs close to 100lbs.  The rest of them are between 50-75lbs.  So,once we got it into my studio it was not going anywhere for a good long while.

Here she is in her new home.  She looks so different now that she is all white.  I did not paint the tracks, as I know from personal experience that that keeps the wheels from moving and causes more headaches than it is worth.  There is enough room for me to walk on both sides.  This is important, as freemotion quilting is done from one side and pantographs or groovy board quilting is done from the other.  There is still more organizing to be done, but we are making progress.  The journey continues, stay tuned…