Thursday, November 08, 2007

Have I learned my lesson?

I think I've finally learned that when I'm having problems quilting to walk away for a while (or a night) and try again at a later time. I had to re-thread my longarm yesterday evening after my thread broke - some freaky thing on the cone got caught up. For some reason I could NOT get the tension readjusted so I could get back to quilting. After making several adjustments that didn't help I shut down for the night.

This afternoon, I walked back in the room, unthreaded the machine and started from scratch - a quick tweak of the tension dial and I was back in business.

I'm quilting more hearts - is that boring? This is a HeartStrings top and I wanted to finish it before the weekend. It's a virtual retreat weekend on Stashbusters and now a group of HeartStrings quilters are planning to *work* this weekend too so my goal is to quilt both the pink tops I have here from our October Project Pink. But first I have to finish up this one! You can see my top and others from our project in our online album.

10 comments:

Vicki W said...

I do the same thing when I hit a point where nothing is working...leave and come back the next day. It seems to make the gremlins get bored and move on to bother someone else.

Laurie said...

mary
i still have to try those hearts...i just love them! hat tension issues with the longarm too...walking away is the BEST solution most of the time!
laurie

Unknown said...

Same thing happens to me and I'll never figure out why trying everything won't work but if I walk away and come back, it works.

Deborah Levy said...

That's the way to do it, when you leave the gremlins get bored and move on like Vicki says.

Love red thread on this one!

Clare said...

Walking away is good, very good. Or turn your hand to something else. I love the red hearts and the yellow and black fabric.

Helen in the UK said...

Your heart quilting is beautiful. It is only boring when YOU get bored of doing it! Every quilt is going to a different recipient, so you can quilt hearts as much as YOU want :)

Quiltdivajulie said...

How could those wonderful hearts EVER be boring?!?!?

Walking away in order to take a break applies not only to quilting/sewing, but a lot of other efforts in life.... it's just that we're all reluctant to admit we need that time/space.

Love your work!!

Anonymous said...

The quilting hearts design is so lovely....true "eye candy" to me!!

Helen said...

Well, I'd be pretty happy if I could quilt hearts like that!!

Lisa said...

I love the way your hearts came out.