Quilting

I feel as if I have been quilting all year so far. I have already quilted my latest Crazy Quilt which I am calling Naturally Crazy. I was quite happy with it when it was finished but halfway through the quilting process I always feel a bit of a panic thinking that it is not going to work.

Here is a photo of one of the blocks called Canada.

I can’t show you the entire quilt because it has no binding yet and I haven’t sewn on any charms.

Now I am quilting my next quilt which is an appliqué quilt and unfortunately I am at the halfway point where I don’t think that it is going to work out. It is giving me a lot of trouble at the moment.

I spent a lot of time with the trapunto. I have been keeping a time sheet so I know how long everything takes. The trapunto took 30 hours.

Here is the back of the quilt showing the squares of wadding that I had sewn to the back of the appliqué.

Here are the offcuts after 3 hours of careful cutting out one part of the trapunto.

When the trapunto was finally finished, I basted the quilt which took 5 and a half hours but that was including preparing the backing fabric.

I finally got to start quilting around all the motifs and my top thread kept breaking every 2 inches of stitching. It was very frustrating. I checked all the usual things and couldn’t understand why it was happening.

I finally got out the book that comes with the machine to see what it said.

Reasons for top thread breaking:

Upper thread tension too tight

Incorrectly threaded

Poor quality or old thread

Stitch plate or hook damaged

Loose threads caught in the pre tension or the take up lever.

None of those things applied to me but I did find out how to get into a part of the machine to do some extra cleaning that I didn’t know existed.

I was sitting at the machine wondering what to do next when I looked at the reel of thread and saw that the thread was caught on the side of it. I had a careful look at it and sure enough there was a rough spot on the edge of the reel that was catching the thread and then it was breaking. I am using silk thread so it is probably a bit more prone to catch than a cotton thread. I changed to a new reel of thread and have had no more trouble since.

I have put that reel aside to use for hand work but I suppose I could file the rough edge if I was desperate to use it on the machine.

I had better get back to quilting.

Bye for now,

Linda