Come Stitch With Me

It took 3 days to machine quilt and hand bind this 54″ x 73″ quilt. I quilted it using Glide thread in Military Gold. Even with the Glide thread, my machine still hiccupped a couple of times as I was doing FMQ. At least it’s done.

After today’s quilt guild meeting, I attached the quilt label and packed the quilt, along with the pattern book, extra thread and remaining fabric, in a medium size Priority Mail box. It was definitely full! Anyway, the post office has the package and it should arrive at my niece’s home in Boston on Monday.

As for my sewing machine, it’s been four years since it’s been in for service. I gave it a really good clean-out, oiled some moving parts and bought a new FMQ bobbin case. A practice quilt sandwich showed everything was as it should be. I’ll quilt a charity quilt next. If the machine misbehaves again, then it will definitely be time to go see Mr. Marc.

You get a date with Jack (of the seam ripper variety). Our date lasted about 6 hours as I unpicked all the FMQ done yesterday. Not fun. Fortunately, it amounted to only about 1/4 of the quilt.

What caused my machine to pitch a hissy fit? The thread. I normally use Glide or AeroQuilt thread for machine quilting. My niece wanted gold thread. I was able to find the desired color locally in a Mettler Silk Finish 50wt cotton. Never had any issues with this particular brand for piecing, so I certainly didn’t expect issues with FMQ. I installed an 80/12 topstitch needle, used the same thread top and bottom and attempted to FMQ. The machine wasn’t having it. I could do about 5 loops on the meander before the thread would break. Tried new needles, adding lubricant to the thread, rethreading multiple times, cleaned out the bobbin area. I finally gave up.

What made it especially exasperating? I’d quilted a bunny tablerunner as a warm-up for this project. I used Glide thread on it. No problems. Turned out really nice.

I loaded Glide thread back on the machine just to test after the Mettler cotton thread fiasco. Worked like a charm. Lesson learned.

Tomorrow, I’ll visit sewingmachine.com in Alpharetta to buy a cone of Glide thread in Military Braid or Caramel. I’ll take the quilt with me to get the best match. Also have a list from a friend of other colors to add to my Glide machine quilting thread collection while I’m there.

No more extended dates with Jack, please.

The few days I spent at Mountain QuiltFest last week were wonderful. I totally disengaged from all social media and most news reports. Know what? I slept well each night because I wasn’t mindlessly scrolling on my phone in the evenings.

Personally, I haven’t posted on FB or Instagram in months. Guess I’ve become a bit contrary in my sixth decade. I’m also not on Twitter, TikTok or any similar platform. This blog and Pinterest are about the only places where I share and save things. I do follow certain quilting, lifestyle and retirement-related content creators on YouTube, but I try to be mindful of the time spent watching said videos.

Several of the social media best practices essays I read suggested that I choose one platform and interact with my chosen platform using only the website interface. Turn off all notifications and delete all social media apps from my phone. Hmmm. Let’s give it a go.

The Book of Faces is probably the one I use most and it’s primarily for neighborhood updates and sewing related groups in which I participate. I also tend to use messenger to contact folks for whom I don’t have a phone number. IG, YT and Pinterest are now off my phone. I’ve also turned off all but the most critical notifications for everything else. We’ll see if it helps.

Hey, if someone really needs to get a hold of me, they can via phone call, text or email.