Ever had One of Those Days??

Ever had one of those days when you should have just stopped and gone for a walk? or baked cookies? or read a book? Anything but quilt??

Well I did!
Yesterday I decided that I had a whole day with no particular commitments, which doesn't often happen, so I would start the FMQ on Daydream..

I had just gotten "Jenny" (my Janome) back from her annual cleaning/check-up so I thought she would be excited to be back in action too.

I loaded up lots of bobbins, got my little quilting gloves on and sat down with my cup of coffee near at hand. Well, that was as good as it got!

My thread kept breaking...shredding actually. And it skipped stitches sometimes.  I have never had a problem with Jenny doing this before. I tried ever suggestion I could find.

• I changed the needle, 
• tried a different size needle, 
• rethreaded the machine (like a billion times!!) ,
•  tried cotton thread, 
• tried poly thread, 
• I tried flipping over the spool of thread so it wound off the other direction,
• I tried adjusting the tension. (although the tension looked ok..no thread showing on top or bottom)

Nothing seemed to help. So I phoned the dealer (who had just serviced the machine) to see if she had any other ideas.  I must admit she gasped a little when I said that I always have done my FMQ without dropping the feed dogs....so I even tried dropping the feed dogs!

The only other suggestion that she had was that it could be the batting! She said some batting has little flecks of particles that may be causing a problem.  Have you ever heard of that ?? I am sure that I have used this batting before and have never had any of these issues.

And there is more....

I decided to try my old Pfaff, even though I don't like FMQ on that machine. Of course the bobbins from the Janome don't fit in the Pfaff! So I had to rewind some onto a Phaff bobbin. 

It seemed to work better,except for this little glitch..

but that was my fault, and we won't even talk about that!!
Then, can you believe it...I ran out of top thread (white !) REALLY!???

Oh, and there is still more...

If I hadn't been so busy re-threading my machine I would have noticed that I wasn't having to take out many pins as I went along....which I only realized after I took the quilt off to look at what I had done.... WOW!!!

I hadn't fully basted the quilt....I am sure that I must have run out of pins, and thought that I would come back and finish it when I had quilted something else and had some extra pins to use. Except, it has been sitting around so long that I forgot! What kind of idiot wouldn't check?? Well I guess I would be that kind of idiot!!
So now I have a WRINKLE in the backing!!! I have always been so careful, and have never had a wrinkle before. I am so "choked" as my kids would say. 

So after a moment when I decided that it was ruined and I should just give up on this....I took a deep breath and had a closer look...

OK maybe it is not totally ruined....

I picked a bit of the stitching out, and it helped smooth out the wrinkle a little, but because I was stopping and starting so much, the stitches are pretty dense in places. 

I re-pinned the whole quilt...now with a bezillion pins...boy is that going to be a pain in the neck when I get going on this again!!!

I went to the fabric store and bought several spools of white thread!

I put everything away....maybe it will work fine the next time I try this????  Or else this was just a bad dream and I will wake up and have a good laugh about it!

Work in Progress Wednesday

Wednesday again???  Already??? Really????
Where does the week go??
And why don't I seem to get much done???? (OK, I really don't want to know the answer to that, because it probably has something to do with wasting too much time)

Anyway, I am still working on the Wonky Blocks "Happy" Quilt..

This is from a great tutorial by Katie at From the Blue Chair. It has really clear instructions, and makes really fun blocks.
The first set of blocks went together so well , I was lulled into thinking that this was easy!! NOT!

I have spent a lot of time (OK that is where the week went) ripping out, resewing with a scant 1/4 " seam to correct some error on my part, or fixing something I sewed upside together down or on the wrong side! I completely mixed up one set, and even had to recut the outside row, which fortunately was the plain white.  I am being more careful now...I think! But it is slow going, though. An added bonus with this pattern is that there is very little waste... thats all folks....

Other works in progress ..Daydream is still waiting to be quilted.. It is a big quilt, so will probably take a couple of days work to do the FMQ!

Another tote bag like this one is cut out and ready to go..

and the rest is still bouncing around in my head!!

my Newfoundland treasures

I was fortunate to get a chance, thanks to Andrea (Comfort Cove Designs Blog) to visit a couple of local quilt stores while I was in Newfoundland. It was so much fun and I bought a few little treasures while I was there.

The first thing I found was a book...Dresden Plates for dummies...OK not quite, but it says simplified..

I have a fascination with Dresden plates, but have never been brave enough to start making one. I have a very old Dresden Plate quilt, that I think was made by my Grandmother.. it is all hand pieced and hand quilted!

I seldom use it because it is filled with real wool, like straight from the sheep, not batting, so I don't know how to clean it. It is super duper warm though!!  I have always liked this quilt, and have thought that I might try to make one someday.  Maybe this will be the starting point????

I also picked up a couple of baby book panels....

I have seen these already made up at craft shows, but have never known where to buy the panels. Now I will be ready for the next baby present!!

I fell in love with the rich colors in these batiks......

I have no idea what I will use them for...mmmm.....ever seen batik Dresden plates??? That would be very striking!

And my last purchase was this little fat quarter bundle...(my suitcase was only so  big!!)

......again, no particular project in mind, but I liked the soft greens/yellows/ browns and thought I could make a "Newfoundland" quilt to remember my trip. ....someday???!!!

Welcome home package

When I got home from vacation I found a great little package waiting for me! It was from Ellen at Ellen gets crafty.

What a fun surprise it was too!
Don't you just love those little felt flowers...and a butterfly!

And who cant use some pretty sticky notes on the desk?? Along with a cute fat quarter and a butterfly stamp of my very own!!

And even the envelope was fun!!

Thank you so much Ellen, that was so sweet, and a nice treat to have waiting for me! I love packages in the mail!!

Home Sweet Home

It is always nice to travel and see some place new....but it is always nice to come home again too!

We had a great trip to Newfoundland, and saw lots of the sites and tasted lots of the local fare! I think that I have now tasted Cod cooked almost every way possible LOL!! And a local treat is Cod Tongues!! yes that is what they are! Yummy little morsels too.  And they go great with the local beer from the Quidi Vidi Brewery !!

Downtown St John's is bright and cheery, all the houses are painted different colors...

And great views looking out over the Atlantic ocean..of course us prairie girls are always fascinated with the ocean...water as far as you can see!!

The hillsides (and there are lots of hills!!) are covered with Lupins growing wild....beautiful..

The tourist centre puts on a "mock battle" up near Signal Hill, it was great!  Complete with drums and flutes and several cannon firings!!

And the people were great, so friendly and helpful, and lots of funny local vocabulary..Yes b'y, jig and rigs, a scoff and a scuff (dinner and dancing) and everybody is called "Darlin" !


I did get a chance to meet up with Andrea who has a blog at  Comfort Cove Designs.  And my goodness..she was wonderful, and soooo generous with her time. She took the afternoon off and drove us out to this amazing little tea house on Conception Bay.... beautiful views, great food!

And then we took a drive to a couple of the local quilt shops..what a treat! So of course I had to buy a bit of Newfoundland fabric to bring home!! 
Thank you soo much Andrea, we had a great time!!

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY !!

I am away on vacation right now, so scheduled this post before I left !

Just wanted to wish all my American friends a wonderful Fourth of July!

                                 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(United_States)

The Next Adventure

We are heading off on a new adventure...a week in Newfoundland!  Very exciting, I have never been there before!

            Cape Spear Lighthouse National Historic Site, http://www.newfoundlandlabrador.com/#

We are staying right downtown near the waterfront, and I hear that there are lots of great things to see and do there.

                                  Houses in Downtown St. John's  http://www.newfoundlandlabrador.com/#

One thing I will be doing is meeting a fellow blogger! What fun! I have been a follower of Andrea at Comfort Cove Designs for awhile, and  when I told her we were coming, she kindly offered to take me to a local quilt shop ...and a local ice cream maker !! Wow ...both sound great!

So I will be having some fun over the next week, but I will not have my laptop with me....so no blogging for me for a week! See you then!