My Lyric Arrived! (A Very Good Day.)

posted in: Day In The Life, Paean, Quilting, Work 0
Goodbye, cruel world. I'm going to sew, now. Photo: Me
Goodbye, cruel world. I’m going to sew, now. Photo: Me

Yesterday the FedEx man brought me a new sewing machine!

Oh, BabyLock. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways: My two (2) Melody machines, my Symphony, my Tiara, and now my Lyric. This post would’ve come yesterday but I had to check with the BabyLock peeps to make sure I could let the cat/machine out of the bag. This this is hot off the truck! I dropped everything and set her up immediately, and I have been sewing on it for basically 24 hours straight. She’s a real beauty, guys. Friendly, intuitive, a great machine for beginners, for taking to classes, and for petting in general. Rides like it’s on rails. Smooth like a chocolate shake. I could go on.

And while we’re on the subject, let me tell you something about BabyLock real quick. Yes, I do promotional work for the company but I do that work precisely because of what I’m about to say, so you needn’t feel like this is some advertorial. It’s not.

When I pitched Quilty, the project was green-lighted but it wasn’t funded. The parent company who gave me the initial “yes,” told me that if we could get sponsors, we could do the show. No sponsors, no Quilty. And let me tell you: just because I was Marianne Fons’s kid didn’t mean I had it easy. Working with the ad seller for the media company, we got rejections. A bunch of them. I was an unknown quantity. Revenue streams for online video were still being understood/explored at the time (this was 2010) and besides: everyone with a project wants sponsors. Most of these companies’ budgets are tapped out before they finish their spreadsheets every quarter.

BabyLock believed in Quilty. By extension, they believed in me. I remember pitching the idea to them at Fall Quilt Market ’10. I was so scared during my spiel I think I actually stuttered once. The two women who were subjected to my pitch were intimidating and very pretty. These days they’re two kindred spirits in my life — really — and they’re still at the company, still believing in me. Most of the people who work at Tacony (BabyLock’s parent company) have been with the company for decades. My friend Pam? Thirty years with BabyLock. This says a lot about BabyLock.

So yeah, the pretty ladies took a chance on Fons 2.0 and that would be reason enough to be loyal to them but then there’s the little matter of the sewing machines being actually, truly, genuinely fantastic. The embroidery machines are like, the best in the biz, but full disclosure: I’m not an embroiderer (say that word out loud) so I don’t play around much on them. I don’t have to. It’s all good stuff, whatever your stitch may be.

I’ve got two quilt tops going. I like them both equally, so I just keep switching back and forth between them. If I had enough room in my apartment, I’d leave my Symphony up on one table and my new Lyric would be on another table. A girl can dream.

Thanks, BabyLock.