COME MEET ELLE MY NEW DREAM MACHINE

Yesterday I took possession of my new baby!  
I was so excited about the actual prospect I could hardly sit still while driving to her owners' home to see here, try her out and if all was as I had hoped it would be to pay for her and bring her home to my sewing room.  
When I saw where she lived and met who owned her I was a very happy quilter because I knew she had been well loved and cared for.  She sews like a dream and has so many bells and whistles which I am not familiar with that it is almost scary!
So here I present to you my beautiful Elle meaning "Beautiful Fairy" and in my mind means beloved best friend.  
She is a just turned one year old Husqvarna Sapphire 855, just had her physical and she is totally in tip top health.

I spent some time last night reading all of her vitals from the Users Manual.   I won't begin using her until sometime tomorrow as too many things are on the burner for today and once I sit down in front of her I won't want to lose my concentration.  This will be a whole new learning curve for me. 
A once lovely local Creative Sewing store and quilt shop in another town about a 3/4 hour drive from where I bought Elle, was going out of business.  The owner is an Expert in the sewing side of working with fabrics and will be teaching full time at the university as well as one of the colleges.  Due to her taking up these positions the shop had to go, and it was housed in her own building and with the building being sold all of the inventory and stock was also offered up for sale at huge reduced prices.   I managed to get two new Olfa 6" X 24" rulers, a pair of machingers, a set of Betty bands and a large spool of 100% white cotton thread all for $40.00 Cdn. as well as a few other bits and bobs thrown in for free.  I had a wonderful and luck filled day yesterday. 
I didn't find any Husqvarna products in her store and will need to buy many more bobbins as I was informed by the past owner of Elle that she may only use Husqvarna bobbins and will not accept any other type so, now I need to go shopping for those as I certainly intend to make good use of her and always want lots of filled bobbins at the ready so that my time is taken up sewing and not refilling bobbins.  
I have 4 large blocks almost finished and am still thinking of making 4 blocks across and 6 down, making it a nice sized quilt and having put these ones together this morning for picture taking I think it best to sash them making the top look more structured, rather than photo # 2 layout whereby they all run together and look jumbled, what do you think? Sashing or no sashing?  

Guess it really is too early stages to make this decision until I see all of the blocks together and whether or not my eye sees which layout looks more structured to me or whether it should be without a structure and allow the cubes to butt one another and therein possibly would lay a whole new look. 
I cannot tell you how much fun it is to be able to tell you all about my new and beautiful new sewing machine, I feel so fortunate and lucky that it was all made possible.  This time last year it would never have been even a slight possibility, am I not a fortunate person today?
Thank you for being here to share my news with you, I just had to tell someone and your it!  
I wish you all a fantastic weekend, here in Ontario we are celebrating our first long weekend of 2012 due to Monday being officially named Family Day, so come Monday many people will not have to return to work.  


A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.  ~Irish Proverb