Quilting is a dangerous sport

Last weekend while cutting a bunch of these

I also cut one of these.

When I've heard about rotary cutter injuries in the past, I wondered why anyone would have their fingers over on that side of the ruler anyway. All you have to do is pay attention to what you are doing and take your time... Oops!

So now I know the trade-off for that speed and multitasking: a slightly smaller finger. It still hurts, and I tend to bump it on everything I pass. On the positive side, I didn't bleed on the fabric!

To all you quilters with full fingers in tact, slow down and be careful -- it happens to the best of us!

Learning the hard way

"Careful. We don't want to learn from this!"

I should heed this advice from Calvin and Hobbs. Unfortunately, I've been learning a lot lately.

Last week I loaded a customer quilt at the shop and started quilting. It wasn't until several passes later when I advanced the quilt that I discovered this: eyelashes.

Eyelashes are great for a night on the town. Not so much on the back of a quilt. Eyelashes mean tension issues. Ugly. So then I had to do this: frog.

Frogs are cute in the garden. But for machine quilters, it just means spending some extra quality time with your seam ripper. Rip it! Rip it! Rip it!

Smooth sailing after that.

I hate when I have to learn things the hard way! But now I check my tension and check it often.