Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Happy Birthday Amber!

Well it is hard to believe my oldest daughter turned 36! Where did the time go?

During the Holidays I made her family new Christmas stockings. They really enjoyed them.  She asked if I would make her some Heirloom wall hangings.  Con job if I ever heard one! LOL. It had been on my quilt bucket list for several years. I figure I would start with hers and work on the ones for the other 2 daughters as holidays popped up.

Last week was her birthday. I got a late start on her birthday wall hanging, but it is done. I will mail it today with an additional bonus. I made her a St Patrick's day wall hanging as well. Her husband is of Irish decent and I thought it would be great to start with these two wall hangings to get her "Heirloom" collection going!





Saturday, March 3, 2012

Louis Quilt Finished!


Louis turned 2yrs old in January. He is very interested in words, objects and being quizzed. I made this quilt with 5 inch blocks his mom picked out. I used my scraps for around the quilt blocks and triangles. My stash for the black and white fabric. Louie loves circles and  the fish fabric was nice contrast for cornerstones. I also was on eBay and bid on a box of 11 lbs of fabric. In the box were some odds and ends. He fell in love with the map fabric. 

After much struggling with the thread (Trilobal variegated) I finished it. It broke over 100 times. I ripped it out several times, but I am stubborn and kept going. It was Signature Trilobal. I reset the tension on the sewing machine for 2 days, changed the needles to several different sizes. Watch Thread doctor on The Quilt Show to get hints. Use the 100/16 and that worked for a while. I thought it was the machine. Thread was only breaking while I was doing FMQ. If  I did straight stitching, it was fine. One of the things that was happening was the thread was pooling and also snagging on the little notch on the spool. I filed the crap out of it and still had an issue. Then I had a light bulb moment!  "PIRATE"! She made an adapter for use with the Sidewinder for bobbins.  So I took her invention and made a horizontal spool holder. My Janome 6600 only has a vertical pin and my cone holder didn't work either. This worked with feeding the thread but continued to break. I pulled off a dozen feet of thread and it worked again for a while. I started watching the thread instead of the FMQ and could see that the thread was coming into machine with one strand split here and there. WE ARE NOT AMUSED!!!!!! I will be writing a letter to Signature. I also read a few comments on the forum from other ladies having skipping issues with the Janome 6600. This was also happening. Time to service my baby!!

So below is the quilt and the spool holder. Thanks Pirate for all the tutorials!