My machine has finally come home. It went into the shop when I ran into trouble with a charity quilt that experienced every disaster possible. The whole project was an exercise in frustration, and I was probably glad to have the break, but then became frustrated with not being able to work.
So, yesterday, as soon as the machine got home, I got down to work, and I finished the sucker. "Tis done!
It's about 40" square, and my husband thinks it's pretty, but it's not something I would wrap a baby in. With the tension problems, and all the satin stitch on the back it's just not "cuddly". But it might make a good "floor" quilt for a baby that's just starting to explore, so I think I'll donate it anyway. I don't know what I would do with it otherwise, and I just want it gone!
I plan to link this with The Needle and Thread Network.
It's now two weeks since my sewing machine went into the shop. While I was told it would be ready by a week ago last Wednesday, I've heard nothing, and when I called was firmly told that they would let me know when it was ready, and there was no need to call again. Add to this the fact that my computer crashed at the beginning of the month, and the old one I fired up, died completely about a week ago. No "diversion therapy" there. But I got my good computer back quite late on Wednesday. It was sent in under warrantee, because the latch that holds the battery in place had broken. So they replaced the hard drive. Go figure!
This leaves me with the option of doing hand work, which is painful, but still satisfies my soul--to a certain extent. So when my copy of the latest Quilting Arts Magazine arrived this week, and I spotted an article on mini-prayer flags, I gave it a try. For sure I had enough scrap fabric and embellishments to use! LOL
I ended up making 10 of them, and plan to give them to family, and share with my fibre art support group. I started with scraps of Duippionni (sp) silk, and re-cycled kimono silk. The plain bits I stamped with fake writing and mandala-like symbols, before stitching.
It proved to be an interesting experiment with mindful stitching, as it gave me a chance to consider the symbolism of various colours and embellishments, certainly the symbolism to my way of thinking. I'm quite happy with how this went. It filled a two whole days for me, and I have some lively reminders of the time spent.
I plan to link this with Lisa Marie Sayres Off the Wall Friday, as well as The Needle and Thread Network.
The past 3-4 weeks have been a frenzy of charity quilt making. My family have convince me that I need to "de-stash", and this is one way of doing it. I don't mind making simple, more traditional quilts--it can relax me--unless I get into tightly focused min set--which happened. Then I started having problems with the most recent quilt, as I described in my previous post. I resolved the first couple of problems by tearing out and re-sewing. This lead to a fear that I would run out of the beautiful tri-lobal polyester that I was using for my satin stitching. Going on-line to order more, I discovered that it's no longer available. This resulted in a lot of frustration and bad words. I accepted the need to find an alternative, or two, or three, which I finally did, but this meant that there is different thread used in different sections of the quilt. Okay, I can live with that. Then the tension on the machine started to get "wonky", for the first time since I bought it 8 years ago. More bad words, but I persevered and took extra care to check the tension every time I changed the bobbin.
I just knew that as soon as the damn quilt was finished, (and I was close,) I would be taking the machine in for a long overdue general servicing. Suddenly, a loud noise that sounded just like an important piece had broken inside the machine.
I accepted that I was beat by the whole situation. I stopped sewing immediately and got the machine ready to take into my dealer, which we did first thing this morning.
Then my DH and I went for a drive in the country. Probably a very good decision.
