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.

A new recruit

I have this box of mismatched, uneven, and not-quite-square squares that are screaming to be rescued and put into an appropriate quilt. Unfortunately, they are already sewn together. **sad face** So my seam ripper and I have been spending some quality time working over this mess. I have been making steady progress with the help of my latest recruit. Nicholas is always eager to lend a hand and is a great helper. For a while I hesitated to let a six-year-old have the seam ripper, but he was very insistent. I finally caved, and he has proven to be a seam-rippin' fool! Yesterday, I caught him kicked back, seam ripper in hand, working away.

Thanks Nick!

Hopefully with Nick's help, I will soon get this phase of the project finished. Then I can start trimming and designing. I hope I can get what is in my head onto this quilt. I'll keep you updated as I think this will turn into a fun project.