Patience required! …

Robyn R

Way back when - you know so far back it’s in the ‘olden days’ - I had a go at free-motion quilting on a longarm frame. Silly me, no guidance from anyone, lessons, or even checking ‘how-to’ on the internet etc. Needless to say, it didn’t go well. Somehow the machine and stitching refused to play nicely together, so ended up with lots of ‘eyelashes’ on the back of the ‘stippling’, and heaps of minuscule stitches bunched up on top of each other. Lines that were supposed to be nice and straight or have a rounded curve, took on a life of their own looking like snail trails on steroids! The quilt itself had been a lesson on skewing blocks using fabric images.

The quilt lay languishing for years, used as an unbound casual dust cover with fraying edges. Then along came a little thing called a pandemic with a lockdown, so out came the quilt - looking blindly past the seams that ‘don’t match’ - and  a determined daily unpicking under a magnifying glass. The focused concentration meant a limited time per day before going cross-eyed! As for those ‘knotted up’ stitches, the point of the seam ripper got such a workout it threatened to run away from the toolbox! Usually snipping the bobbin thread, allows for pulling out the top thread - not in this case! Stitches too tight, too short and too bunched in the weird so-called ‘border patterns’.

Patience, perseverance, and lockdown won out. Unpicking finally done with an occasional tiny frayed hole here and there. So on to replacing the quilting with far more experience and knowledge. Lots of pins to hold the now loose layers together. No stippling this time, just in the ditch around the blocks, sashing, fans and ladies. Then ruler quilting in the borders, cleaning up the frayed edges, and stitching down the binding - yup, the binding had already been attached!

So what do you think the lesson is? ….

Cheers

Robyn