Tuesday, August 9, 2016

RUH ROH!

After playing around with a few charity quilts and a blank piece of fabric I decided it was time to try a "real" quilt.  I figured I would start on my Quatrefoil quilt because I like it less than the other one that I have ready.  It was definitely not as easy to load this one as it is the smaller ones but after a few course corrections we (thankfully I had help) got it onto the frame. 


I decided to fire up the machine on a Saturday night when I could spend the evening in the basement keeping an eye on it and advancing it along. My husband decided it would be a good night for us to watch the new Star Wars while the machine ran. Not that being distracted by Star Wars has anything to do with what happened next... Everything was going along well.  I had quilted three complete rows and advanced on to the fourth. It was looking great.  And then the thread broke. I re-threaded, restarted, and noticed that the tension looked a little odd. Then the thread broke again.  Re-thread, restart.  The tension started looking really bad.


When the row was finished I rolled the quilt forward to see how bad it was. And it was BAD. Very, very bad.


I will have to rip out the entire last row of quilting, reload the quilt and try to line things up to begin where it left off. And figure out what the heck happened and correct it. So far I have taken the quilt off the frame and made a start on ripping. I started at the end before things went bad and it is not going well. It may take a month - or longer - to get all the stitches out!

I've been distracted from making progress on any of my UFOs by my SBOWs and Panama Pyramids.  I didn't touch my Rising Sun this month (the APQ UFO selection for July) and didn't even do enough orange peels to warrant a count.  I did finish two more Pyramids (I love those stamps!) and two more Clara's Stars.  

And then another shiny object came along and grabbed my attention....

Kathy over at Kathy's Quilts shared that she decided to use this year's leader and ender project to make the Clarissa Quilt. She shared pictures of the quilt and it is very cool.  She's planning to host a sew along of sorts to make it.  So of course I want to join!  I ditched the red and cream hourglass blocks I made last weekend and made a few smaller ones using fat quarters from a collection I have that I think will be perfect for this quilt. I will have to do some planning and cutting to have this ready to use for leaders and enders.


I have a couple of other projects I'm itching to start but more on those next time.  I'm quite confident I will give in and start them very soon. In the meantime I have been making progress on my basket.  I replaced the pear and like it better now.  Quite a few of the pieces below are only basted but I am loving how it is coming together.


That basket was a bit of a hassle but I am pleased with how it turned out. I'm still a bit hung up on the fact that the basket is see-through and looks empty with stuff floating on top. Yes, I definitely have issues!

1 comment:

Susie H said...

The Clarissa quilt is absolutely a GREAT way to go with BH's Leader & Enders Challenge. Can't wait to see what you come up with. As for me ... still working on the Lozenges! Hahaha! What was that, 2014?

Sorry to read about your quilting ruh-roh! I'm sure the best quilters also had to do some ripping in the learning process. Still, it stinks! I'm sure you'll have that machine mastered in (a relatively) short time!