This is my completed Quilt Guild Paint Chip Summer Challenge. I made my project into a pillow. I actually finished this on Saturday but I didn’t want to post a picture until I had the pillow form and I could say it was totally complete. I was off work today and so I stopped by the fabric store and picked up the pillow form today. I had pillow forms at home–16″, 20″, and 22″. This pillow is 18″ square–the only size I didn’t have on hand at home!

I started a new project on Sunday–a double four patch from 3″ squares that I had already cut. I am off work tomorrow so I hope to finish the blocks then. I just couldn’t bring myself to work on another UFO last weekend. There must be a quilting rule somewhere about completing only one UFO per weekend!

I have been working on a customer quilt all week–not because it is a difficult quilt, but because I was spending more time frogging than quilting. I was 2/3 of the way through quilting this queen size quilt when the thread started breaking and bird’s nests starting appearing on the back.

I changed the needle, changed the bobbin, changed the bobbin case, checked timing, and adjusted the tension. Nothing I tried came close to fixing the problem.

I was using Bottom Line thread in the needle and in the bobbin. This is a very high quality thread — something that has been no-fail for me in the past. My machine has always loved this thread and behaved wonderfully.

I noticed as I was quilting that the thread would feed off the thread cone fairly evenly and then it would all of a sudden loop back on itself and feed through the tension disks. I had checked everything else and not discovered the problem. Was it possible that my problem was as simple as the thread not feeding off the cone evenly?

I surfed the internet looking for other quilters who may have had similar problems. I came across a comment someone made about using a knee hi to cover the thread spool to control the thread feeding off the cone. Someone else mentioned putting a bit of polyester batting in the first thread guide.

What could I loose, so I gave both suggestions a try. What do you know–problem fixed! I have posted a picture below so that other long armers who read this blog can have a look at the simple solution that worked for me. Hopefully, I can save someone else a week’s worth of time should they ever experience the same difficulty. Note the placement of the batting in the first thread guide and the knee hi on the thread cone. Not the most attractive set up, but definitely worth repeating.

Because of this easy fix, I finished the customer quilt tonight. Here it is….
It is a queen size Yellow Brick Road–93″ x 110″. It feels good to have finished this quilt.

I am exhausted! It is surprising how much stress you put on yourself when you don’t understand what is causing a problem. Once the job is done and you can relax, you realize just how tired you really are.

I am going to reward myself tomorrow by working on one of my own projects in the cool of my air conditioned studio. Ahhhhhhhhh…..relief from the heat wave outside!

I have not been quilting; but I have been working on a quilt-related activity. I have been trying to trouble shoot what is going wrong with my long arm. I am getting thread breakage and bird’s nests on the back of my current project. What takes me minutes to stitch is taking hours to frog. I have about 5 rows left to complete on a queen size quilt for a customer and I would just like to get the job finished!

After work tonight I am going to try again to figure out what is going wrong. Wish me luck!

Evelyn, aka Starfishy asked, “Do you have a “landmark” that marks your return home? Evelyn showed us a picture of the harbor near her home. Then Dot of Rantala Rags responded by posting a picture of her landmark; a “Welcome to Montana” sign.

What landmarks stand out from your part of the world?

This is a picture of the mountain that I see from my living room window. (The picture was not taken from my living room window though–I headed to the outskirts of town to get a picture with nothing distracting in the foreground.)

The patch of snow in the middle of the mountain represents an angel. (If you look closely you can see her head, body, and wings.) When the snow melts from this mountain in the spring, this patch of snow is left. This mountain with the angel is definitely something that identifies my town.

I have added a world map to the left hand side of my blog. This map tracks the location of visitors to my blog and plots those locations on a world map. I can not see details of who you are or what your city is; I can just see the map with the pin points representing the home of each of the visitors to this site.

It appears that there are visitors from Australia, South Africa, Norway, Ireland, France, the United States, and Canada.

It struck me today while I was checking the map, just how small this world is. The World Wide Web or WWW has shrunk this great big planet. We can now communicate and exchange information with people anywhere in the world in seconds. Blogging has become a fabulous method of “getting the message out.”

I know that the visitors here include relatives who check in periodically to see what the “latest catch is”, family members who suffer from insomnia and use their inability to get a good nights sleep to check this blog in the middle of the night, members of my own quilt guild who don’t leave comments on the blog but when I see them at guild meetings remind me that I have not posted recently, friends that I used to see on a daily basis who have moved to other parts of the world, including Arizona, Ontario, and Italy, and there are my new friends–the Stash Quilters who track the feeds from my blog using Bloglines so they can read the “latest”as soon as it is posted. To all of you, I say, “Welcome to my small spot on this planet. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you continue to visit.”