Thursday, August 23, 2012

I decided today that, rather than do my “around the house” jobs first, I’d head up to the studio while I was still fresh. I’m a morning person and I can usually accomplish more in a few hours of the morning than the same amount of time in the afternoon. I had two strikes against me though.

Yesterday in my journal I joked about two packages of needles being enough to finish my quilting. I also mentioned in a Guild posting that I hoped to have this quilt finished by early next week. I was on about needle number four before I threw the whole project across the room in disgust!

I did some research on the Web before heading out to my Red Cross shift. I found several suggestions: change the needle size; change the stitch length from 0 to 2 even though the feed dogs are down and not pulling the fabric; speed up; slow down; and even one that showed you how to break the darning foot to make it work better!

I headed back to the fabric shop after I dropped Margaret off at home. My list yesterday had what I needed for some future projects, but I had neglected to make a list for my more current ideas. I saw one of the Guild members while I was there and I tried to give her a hard time about shopping twice, but she already knew I’d been shopping yesterday so she gave it right back to me.

When I got home I was determined to sort out this quilting problem. I changed the needle size and the stitch length and, although I didn’t break any needles, my tension was all off and I had eyelashing on the back. I didn’t feel any further ahead so I went back to stitch length 0, and I played around with my tension. Finally, just before Pat called me for dinner, I finished up all the free motion quilting I’m going to do. I am so glad that is behind me!

Are you wondering when I squeezed in that housework I put off this morning? One day without housework isn’t going to hurt us so I didn’t do any of it!

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