She arrives, and put to work straight away :0)

At precisely 12:02 pm, the lovely UPS man arrived. We were in the midst of eating, but bolted out to the deck right away to watch our buddy hoist the box out of the truck and place in the front entry-way. The way he lifted and carried it made me worry it was QUITE heavy. However, once we finished lunch, and after I snapped this pic, I carried it to the living room, no problems :0)

By 12:35, I was digging in to the box. I only opened the top cover and saw all the books and paperwork, and the excitement was starting to seriously hit me. So much, in fact, that even Caitlyn couldn't resist giggling at mom's excitement :0)

So, for the next 20 minutes (or so), I looked through the paperwork, and more importantly, the user's manual. How FUN!

Finally, at 1:00, I dug into the rest of the box, and set all the pieces out on the floor. So many goodies :0) It was actually quite fun opening the bag of goodies (feet, bobbins, etc) and organizing them into the included Bernina "cabinet" (for lack of a better word.)

Amazingly, I didn't take it downstairs and play until about 2:00. There were a few things that needed to be done first---cleaning up from lunch, etc.

And then, PLAY TIME! For the first 20 minutes or so, I played with many of the stitches. I didn't think of taking a pic of the fabric swatch. there are SO many choices----SO FUN!
So then, looking around the sewing room for something to "try" for real lead me to this block I pieced last year when I was attempting an original creation for "Quest for a Cure."
I didn't care for the workmanship on the block, so it's been lying around since. Perfect opportunity here, though. When I bought the machine last Sunday, I also purchased some verigated (sp?) thread. Again I thought---perfect opportunity here. I choose 2 different quilting decorative stitches to travel along the center seams. I used a scalloped decorative stitch along the edges of the purple pieces; I free-motioned in the pink flowered areas (using the hyped-up Bernina Stitch regulator). It actually IS quite nice and easy to use! I then put on the walking foot, and quilted the corner purples pieces in about .5" inch grids.

Ahhh.....SO nice having a top-quality machine! It will definitely be a "honeymoon" for quite a while!
Then, what to do next? Finish a UFO! I grabbed Cassie's 30's quilt (okay, not ACTUALLY all 30's fabrics, but close enough). I only needed to quilt the piano-key borders, and was done with that in about 45 minutes. I cut up some yellow fabric to use as binding, and sewed it on too. So....her quilt is ALMOST done. I started hand-stitching the binding to the back last night at 10:00 while watching Comedy Central (this is only the second quilt that I've used REAL binding on---otherwise I use the "cheat" method of rolling the back fabric to the front and sewing it down by machine). By 11:30, I had ONLY finished HALF of one side! My goodness----this takes a long time!!!!

What's my favorite aspect of her so far? Ooooo...toughy! I LOVE all the stitch options, hands-down. BUT, I think it's the start/stop button while doing free-motion. I don't have to concentrate on both my hands and foot getting together in sync---I only have to concentrate on my hands when it's running in "cruise-control" mode :0)
Happy Sewing everyone :0)