One of those weeks.....

Yep, that's right.  My large machine has been in for servicing, and I had hoped to get it back this week, as I was enrolled in a workshop yesterday.  Didn't get it back.  We're "waiting for parts".  This meant taking the old machine,  the one I keep for piecing, as it's more accurate than the newer one.  I spent a lot of hours FMQ'g on this older machine, with its small harp, before buying the newer on with the 11" one.  So I was optimistic, and prepared my supplies,  winding a couple of bobbins with Superior Bottomline.  I could only find the colour I need for the top in Bottomline, as well, so that went along.  The most critical part of the workshop involved FMQ'g, on a piece  that would have both sides showing, when finished.  Well, the darn machine didn't like Bottomline, and I was faced with constant thread breakage, and snarls.  I tried every strategy I knew, but that didn't help.  There was even a former machine salesperson, another student, who helped a bit, finally lending me a spool of Wonderfil that I used in the bobbin, with some decent results---for awhile.  I did manage to get enough FMQ'g done to continue on the workshop project, despite the upper tension started going out more and more often, finally proving un-fixable.  So now I have another machine to go in for servicing, once the newer one come home again.

But that doesn't help with the line of projects, each one with a looming deadline, that are scattered all over the studio.  While driving out into the country today, to take  down a show in a town about 1 1/2 hour away, I remembered giving my daughter a small, inexpensive machine, for Chritsmas, a few years ago.  I gave her a call, and then dropped in to pick it up on my way home.  Not as easy as it sounds, as she also lives in the country, but in the opposite direction.

So the evening was spent using every trick I know to figure out how to get a machine to do FMQ'g, when that machine was never intended to do it.  I ended up with quite the jury-rigged system, but one that will let me do the basics, although I would never attempt to do any exhibition  work on it.  I'll have to see how much progress I make on the deadlines, given the limitations of what I have.  But it will keep me from giving up the game in frustration, at least until the "big" machine comes home.