Yesterday saw me in the sewing room for nearly the entire day. I began working on the 4th of the 5 Quilts of Valor and immediately ran into trouble with the thread tension. This is sooooo frustrating for me. I chose a different thread for this quilt and this time, I used a 50 wt thread on the top and bottom but they weren't the same color. This quilt has a white backing and I used a white Gutterman thread in the bottom, but a blue Gutterman thread in the top. Both are 50 wt so there should be no problem, right? Wrong. Nothing but eyelashes when I did free motion quilting! Why is that!!!! My sewing machine guy says my very expensive, fancy-dancy machine is quite touchy when it comes to thread tension--I guess so!
After trying a few different threads on the top with no luck, I decided this quilt will have straight line quilting, not FMQ. I put on the new foot I'd recently purchased, designed especially for stitching in the ditch. "Ah, yes," says I, "This should do the trick!" Well, not exactly. I took this pic off the website where I purchased the foot. Look closely and you can see there's a little bar in the center of the foot, in front of the needle. That's supposed to go down the seam and the needle will stitch exactly in the seam. I admit, it was easier to keep my eyes on the bar and not the needle, but when I did look at the needle as I was sewing, I saw that it was about a 32nd of an inch off and the stitching was NOT in the ditch at all! By the end of the ditch I was not stitching in, I also realized that this won't work as I should be using the walking foot when quilting. ARRRRRGH! Off went this foot and on went the walking foot and from then on, I was able to get something done. BTW, I intend to send a review to the company that sold me this POS and let them know it doesn't do the job as advertised!
So, after all the frustration with tension and feet, and for that matter, tension in my feet, 😁 I was able to get all the foundation straight line stitching done, as well as a semi fancy design in the center of the 2 large stars in the quilt, and then I drew a blank. The rest of the quilt is made up of 9" blocks of 2" strips. I'm tempted to simply stitch a wavy line in the center of each strip, but that would mean a lot of starting and stopping--and thread burying, which takes a lot of time, and I'm running out of time. I put it all away at that point, figuring that overnight an inspiration would come to me.
Instead, I took out this pattern, On Vacation, which I found on Pinterest and purchased it from Craftsy which you can see here .
My colors aren't like the pattern--I used whatever scraps appealed to me--and it isn't as bright as in this picture. I knew when I saw the image on Pinterest that I had to make it for Elaine, my camping friend and the person I also made the camper bag for. I think she'll like both of these things,
For the On Vacation, I was able to make the pieced border out of scraps, and cut and fused all the applique. Today, after I finish quilting up the Quilt of Valor, I hope to get all the buttonhole stitching done on the table runner. Doubt that I'll get it quilted up tho. That will have to wait until I've recovered from the surgery.
Those are the sewing tasks for me today. I also have to give Don a hand in the back yard and get the outdoor things put away for winter, and I want to make a crock pot of chicken veggie wild rice soup for tomorrow. The weather here has been col and rainy for days, and a nice hearty and warm soup fits the bill.
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