New work

I have started my next exhibition piece.  The original concept was quite simple, and more traditional than others I've recently done.  A simple waterfall, with pieced rocks on either side.  The rocks were to be hand appliqued in place, the water FMQ'd, and the edge faced.  Piecing the rocks went well, they were cut out, hand basted, and the first side hand appliqued. But then I realized that the water would have to be added and quilted, before the rocks on the second side were added.  Since I had planned a little turbulance at the base of the falls, there would have to be rocks there as well.  Had to make more rocks, and the water had to be pieced to attach the rocks. If there was turbulance, then there would be spray on the rocks.  Okay, need to add a little paint, but the spray could also be stitched using bobbin stitching technique. Well, tried that on the Janome, and it just wouldn't work.  So had to haul out the old Pfaff--does bobbin work beautifully. But I had been told that the Janome would do bobbin work, and on the internet, ladies have spoken of using a special bobbin case to do bobbin work on the Janome. So off to the Janome store to ask about the special bobbin case.No-one there knew anything about it. We did find a bobbin case for machine quilting and "looks like hand done" machine quilting, but I wasn't going to buy it unless I knew it would work.

 Driving home I got to thinking.  The " looks like hand done" technique requires that the lower tension would be totally over-ridden by the upper tension, so that the bobbin thread is pulled to the top.  It's accomplished by adjusting the upper tension to maximum, but if the upper tension were left at normal and the lower tension reduced to minimum, would not that accomplish the same thing? And for bobbin work, the lower tension must be signifiacntly reduced, or eliminated altogether.  So this bobbin case may actually be what I'm looking for, but I still think I want to try it out to be sure.