It's been a quiet time in my social media, but busy behind the scenes! In mid August, my wait time for a new knee ended with a very successful knee replacement surgery. The first couple of weeks of recovery were pretty rough, and I'm so thankful for the loving care of my thoughtful husband. The surgery prep itself the day of surgery was interesting too - the blanket of warm air that is used to get you warmed up to the core feels amazing!!
My physiotherapist team is close by - Komoka Physiotherapy and Wellness clinic, just a few minutes from the house. Adam provided excellent treatment, rebuilding range of motion and core strength. Those exercises are key to this recovery - the doctors can replace the "hardware" but you, the patient, have to do the hard work of keeping that knee moving. Funny moments were advice on using the walker or cane for protection in the grocery store - to help keep people from bumping into you, LOL.
By week 3, I was ready to quilt again! I was doing stairs (slowly, but doing it!), so was able to go down to the studio. I had prepared a bunch of quilts so they were all ready to load. The first after-surgery quilt was one of my own - still had lots of meds on board, so I wanted to be sure I didn't mess up a client quilt! That went really well, so loaded a small baby quilt. And my machine started shredding thread. Worked through that quilt with too many breaks but got it done.
Loaded up a test sandwich to try to figure out what was going wrong. I changed everything - needles, thread, hopping foot, all the usual tweaks to get back to good stitches, but my Bernina was having none of it. My dealer came out to see what was happening, and after four visits in five days, the decision was that my machine needed the expertise of the lead tech at Bernina Canada. This is the test sandwich (the Glide failed on the left side, out of the photo). Shreds and skipped stitches marked. Changes in tension marked. Digital designs and freehand quilting were tested.
We got the box to pack the machine head and our daughter came after work to help dismantle the machine from the frame and load the gigantic box into the car for transport the next day. Off to Bernina Canada (Whitby) we went, and dropped off my machine. They service machines as they come in, so I knew it might be a couple of weeks before it was worked on. The machine was delivered to Bernina on Friday, Sept 16th.
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My very sad Bernina quilting frame without its Bernina Q24 sew head.
Bits and tools ready for when it comes back home. |
While my machine was being repaired, I had offers from two of my amazing longarm friends to use their machines. I had a series of quilts that were intended to be entered into QuiltCon (deadline Oct 31st), so I did take up the offer from my nearest friend and worked on these quilts. We both have zippered leaders, and she works during the day and I often am quilting in the evening, so it worked pretty well to zip off hers and load mine, unload and zip hers back on. What an amazing friend to have!! And my clients were very gracious and understanding in the delay I was experiencing in getting their quilts back to them. I am so grateful for these wonderful clients!
It was Oct 19 when my machine was ready to be picked up. 40 very long and sad days out of business. To this day, I still do not have any report on what was done to fix the machine, other than "adjustments were made". No detail from the lead tech, no detail from the dealer. Let me ask you this ... when you take a vehicle in for service, does the shop tell you what they did? Yes, they sure do. To say that I am very put off by not having any detail of what was corrected, would be a very mild assessment of my disappointment with Bernina. And yes, I communicated very clearly that I expected this detail.
The bright side though is that my machine is back to its beautiful stitches, and I was back in production. Those quilts for QuiltCon were finished up and back in the maker's hands in time for photos and submission, altho the maker ended up submitting to a different show.
My knee is doing well, I'm continuing with strengthening exercises and my range of motion is excellent. I've been a very busy bee! And I have some very exciting things happening in my quilting practice! Stay tuned :)
