Yes…Still Stitching!

Ordinarily, I enjoy the ebbs and flows of a seasonal cycle, working out of doors in this summer weather, rain or shine. But given the timelines of this Explorations project, my time outside has been seriously curtailed; not to mention that deadlines are the bane of my existence! Everything that can go wrong does just that – just because – it’s the nature of this way of working.

I thought I had 3 rolls of the same purple thread for this piece, but when I ran out of the spool I started with, it turns out that I was mistaken. The color was similar but when stitched on next to it, it was clearly more of a violet than a purple. I looked around locally, not wanting to have to trek far for it but couldn’t find it.

I ordered it on ebay which meant I had to wait for it. Of course, when it arrived it was the same color as the three spools I already had – close but no cigar!  A friend (thanks Alanna!) told me about a quilt shop in Tewksbury, Sew Together, that I wasn’t aware of and they had 2 spools of exactly what I wanted! Whew! They actually carry Aurofil thread, an elusive commodity in this part of the woods!

I previously mentioned that there’s quite a bit of curved stitching and I’m not very experienced at working with it. As I go along, it began to bunch up in certain areas and it was going to only get worse if I didn’t deal with it. You can see the problem below.

So, I went out to my outer studio and cleared the large working table of all the debris that has piled up there and I blocked the whole thing. Thankfully, that did the trick and I could carry on.

Here’s a good link to a quilt blocking tute by Jenny Lyon.

It’s been awhile since I’ve had my machine serviced. Knowing that it really needs a tune up, I was hoping to just get this piece done before it started acting up. Need I say, I was not so lucky! The stitch size is slipping and so as I go along, the stitch may start out as #2 and wham! it slips to #4 …what’s next!?