Free motion play

This week was somewhat of mishmash with no deliberate plans as things just tend to simply happen.  I started by putting one of my own quilts on the frame with the sole purpose of using this as a skill builder or an experiment and try something new.

First experiment was to use two layers of batting and two thirds down the quilt I realized this was not ideal for a bed quilt.  The roll on the take up bar became so thick it was almost impossible to advance and this was only when I did all the stitching in black (sashing).

When I got to the bottom border I wanted to use a ruler I’ve never used before and decided on Taj from Angela Walters.  Started with an outline and inner and then needed filler in between.

After doing about 7 of these I decided I really didn’t like it so one day was spent unpicking.

Everyday brought its own miseries and the motor of our huge garden gate decided to quit. Now hubby was on his way on a business trip with no time to investigate or try to repair, so slipping and sliding in my high heels and neat dress I had to push that thing aside to get my car out and get to work.

Repairman called and appointment made I had to further unzip my quilt from the frame as my machine too had to be fixed.  This has been the sixth component replaced in my machine in just over a year.  Surely if they gave me a new machine after my first complaint it would have been much cheaper for them and less frustrating to me.  I always said I got the only dud that was imported to South Africa and now with the last two PC boards I heard that my machine still had the previous, not so successful version of boards which has been updated and luckily I have these in too.  Hoping this would be the very last of my problems.

With the quilt off the frame on a guest bed I for a moment there wondered if I should just quit with quilting it as is, as it really didn’t look bad.

I however needed to test the machine and zipped it up again, trying out my new motif on the border and this looked much better.

The gate repairman did his fix hubby returned safe and sound, so life was good again.

With the bottom border and sashing done I rolled the quilt backwards and decided to do dense free motion filler in every block, another first for me.  It started out terrible but as they say ‘practice makes perfect’, it got much better as I went along. Now this should keep me busy for a while.