Top-of-the-Waves Tuesday...
...and the weekend report.
My goal for the weekend was to make significant progress on machine-quilting Seaside Dreams. Right off the bat, there were issues. When I had to replace the backing fabric, it didn't occur to me that the thread I bought for the back wouldn't work - it was too dark. After going through my thread stash, it was clear that I did not have anything that would work. I had to buy thread.
I wasn't in the mood to go to the quilt store in the rain, so I spent Friday afternoon finishing the singles for the Dragon Scales handspun (Ravelry) that I started at January's Spin-In. It is now ready to ply.
Saturday morning, I went to the quilt store and chose some thread for the backing, plus some supplementary threads for some of the front motifs. I also found a cute coffee panel that will make a nice lap quilt. (Oops!)
I wound three bobbins and started quilting around the center panel. I had to switch threads a couple of times because of the panel's color changes. It's a bigger quilt than I normally make and the quilting was taking longer than I expected. And factor in that I was doing laundry at the same time.
Sunday is grocery/clean out the refrigerator day. For some reason, the store was busier than normal and it took longer to shop. We decided on a chicken-pasta casserole for dinner. When I got home from the store, I put things away, dumped the old stuff, and prepped the casserole. I got the casserole in the fridge and had lunch. By that time is was 1pm.
I resumed the machine quilting and had just finished side 3 of 4 of a border section, when I noticed the top thread was looping on the back. WTH! I used scraps to make a test piece. I replaced the needle (which needed it), adjusted the tension, and tried it on the test piece. Nope. Used canned air to blow out the lint, re-threaded the machine and the bobbin, and tried again. Nope. Then I remembered that one of the bobbins had filled much slower than the others. Maybe that made the bobbin thread too tight.
I swapped out the bobbin and re-threaded everything. This time, the tension looked good on the test piece. I tried it on the 4th section and it looked good. Yay! Also, boo. I had to pull out the three sections I had just sewn and sew them again. Sigh.
On Sunday, I try not to craft beyond 5:30pm so I can get dinner going and we can eat at a reasonable time. This only gave me 4 hours of quilting time, and with the 2-steps-forward-1-step-back action, that meant I didn't get much done on Sunday either.
Some craft weekends are better than others. This wasn't one of them.
.
My goal for the weekend was to make significant progress on machine-quilting Seaside Dreams. Right off the bat, there were issues. When I had to replace the backing fabric, it didn't occur to me that the thread I bought for the back wouldn't work - it was too dark. After going through my thread stash, it was clear that I did not have anything that would work. I had to buy thread.
I wasn't in the mood to go to the quilt store in the rain, so I spent Friday afternoon finishing the singles for the Dragon Scales handspun (Ravelry) that I started at January's Spin-In. It is now ready to ply.
Saturday morning, I went to the quilt store and chose some thread for the backing, plus some supplementary threads for some of the front motifs. I also found a cute coffee panel that will make a nice lap quilt. (Oops!)
I wound three bobbins and started quilting around the center panel. I had to switch threads a couple of times because of the panel's color changes. It's a bigger quilt than I normally make and the quilting was taking longer than I expected. And factor in that I was doing laundry at the same time.
Sunday is grocery/clean out the refrigerator day. For some reason, the store was busier than normal and it took longer to shop. We decided on a chicken-pasta casserole for dinner. When I got home from the store, I put things away, dumped the old stuff, and prepped the casserole. I got the casserole in the fridge and had lunch. By that time is was 1pm.
I resumed the machine quilting and had just finished side 3 of 4 of a border section, when I noticed the top thread was looping on the back. WTH! I used scraps to make a test piece. I replaced the needle (which needed it), adjusted the tension, and tried it on the test piece. Nope. Used canned air to blow out the lint, re-threaded the machine and the bobbin, and tried again. Nope. Then I remembered that one of the bobbins had filled much slower than the others. Maybe that made the bobbin thread too tight.
I swapped out the bobbin and re-threaded everything. This time, the tension looked good on the test piece. I tried it on the 4th section and it looked good. Yay! Also, boo. I had to pull out the three sections I had just sewn and sew them again. Sigh.
On Sunday, I try not to craft beyond 5:30pm so I can get dinner going and we can eat at a reasonable time. This only gave me 4 hours of quilting time, and with the 2-steps-forward-1-step-back action, that meant I didn't get much done on Sunday either.
Some craft weekends are better than others. This wasn't one of them.
.
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