A New Adventure and a Contest

Today I purchased a long arm quilting machine and embarked upon the journey of beginning a new business. Most of you have seen my previous post where I explained the long arm machine that I rent and posted pictures of me with it. This is something I have dreamed of doing for several years and something Warren and I have talked seriously about for the last 3 years. The many steps I took to get to this point included reading up on machine quilting as a business, researching the need with my local quilt shop, taking classes to work a long arm, renting a long arm at a local quilt shop, test driving every machine on the market and waiting until it fit into our already busy lives. As Graham got closer to getting ready to begin preschool, I realized the time was upon me. If I am going to do this the time is now. The machine is large, it will take up most of my sewing room. It is on a 12 foot frame and needs 13 feet by 7 feet of clearance to walk around it. They will begin building it this week and it should be shipped in 4-5 weeks. In the meantime I prepare. I need to get a web site up and running, business cards, brochures, make room for the machine, buy batting and piece together as many quilt top as I can so I have lots to practice on and I can hit the ground running. Here are the contest details! I need help coming up with a clever name. Send me as many ideas as you can think of, the deadline is February 8th. Don't send Quilting by Danielle, I already came up with that, but it's the best I have so far. The winning name submitter will receive a $25 gift card of their choice. My plan is to practice the first month and get to know my machine. The second month I will be offering half price quilting services. I will have a limit to how many I will accept so this is first come first served. If you have any quilt tops patiently waiting to be quilted I would love to help you get them on a bed! Also keep me in mind for school auctions and other fundraisers, I will happily donate gift certificates for quilting services. I am excited and scared, but mostly excited! This is the perfect fit for me in so many ways and I am glad I have so much to do in the next 5 weeks because it is going to be hard to wait for my machine to get here!