Last month I hit the road towards Alsace, France, to attend the European Patchwork Meeting. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but it didn’t really matter all that much because I was going there to buy stuff: I was going to pick up a roll of batting I’d ordered from a vendor in the Netherlands, from whom I bought a roll at Nadelwelt in Karlsruhe in mid-2014, and I was going TO BUY A HANDIQUILTER longarm machine. You know, NO BIGGIE.
(More on the show in a separate post. It was mind blowing.)
I fell in love with the Avante when I took a class in Karlsruhe, but nearly fell off my chair when I heard how much it costs. Obviously I wasn’t going to spend nine thousand euro on a sewing machine. That’s CRAZY talk. But I think deep down I knew that I would. Not right away, certainly, but one day. So I started saving my pennies. When I visited Toronto in the fall of 2014 I went to a quilt show with my mom and played with the machine a bit more (I kept circling around and having a go, then running away when the salespeople approached). After I returned home, my parents, who at the best of times don’t have two pennies to rub together, offered me use of their credit line to buy it, which was incredibly generous, but I couldn’t take on that much debt, and certainly not when it’s secured against my parents’ house. (I come from good people, y’all.)
By the beginning of 2015 I’d managed to save about three thousand euro, and then my 40th birthday came around in February with a massive surprise of parents and friends turning up from Canada, the US, and England. My parents hit up the entire family for my longarm fund and suddenly nine thousand euro didn’t seem so nuts—I was more than halfway there! So I embarked on a major austerity program. I started packing my lunch, jacked up my monthly savings to the point where I was just barely managing to put gas in my car, saved all my fivers (do you save your coins? Don’t. Save your fivers. You’re welcome).
The math added up. I would have the cash on hand by the time the European Patchwork Meeting in September rolled around. Except then I found out that the price had gone up by another fifteen hundred euro (except it didn’t. It actually went up by twenty three hundred, as it would transpire when it came time to buy it). I hemmed, I hawed. I considered waiting until the new year because I’d have a few more months to save and my thirteenth salary would come in, but then the Germ said—just buy it. I’ll lend you the money.
So I did! I did a class at the show and then went over to the Handiquilter booth and told the man: Sell me a Handiquilter, Nate! (Nate, happens to be Handiquilter’s Director of Global Business Development. You know, NO BIGGIE.)
So he did! I bought one of the machines that was used in the class (brand new except for the classes at the show) for ten thousand euro, and with it comes massive box of thread and two-days’ private tuition by a Handiquilter educator in my house.
It was delivered at the beginning of October and my trainer, Patricia, will be here in mid-November to teach me everything I need to know. I’ve played with it a bit so far and I’m here to tell you that I am absolutely TERRIBLE at it, but not at all deterred.
Also, did I mention I am poor? A poor but delighted bunny.