The Great P is Wise, So Wise, Again

Seen outside a local children's store - "Tutus for sale, locally made". Nothing brings a community closer than locally made tutus. Remember when 'imports' were a sign of prestige and quality? I like the way this pendulum is swinging. I still like the idea of on line shopping, but I love to buy local whenever I can. I also like the idea of celebrating our ability to produce quality products in our own backyard, and be proud of them. Yah us!

I finished a quilt today. It's lovely and I'm pleased with it. Pictures next time as I'm exhausted! It took about 1 1/2 hours to apply the binding! I like to use a blanket stitch to sew down the second side. It looks lovely and perhaps adds a bit of strength. However it took over one full bobbin of #50 thread and a very very long time to work my way around a small size quilt. It's still worth it, but I am amazed!

I machine quilted it at home and I'm getting much more comfortable with free motion quilting. On one square I tried little tiny wiggles in the centre square and then careful flower tracing in the border. Took longer, but it looked good.

Until I turned it over. Another lesson from the Great P greeted me on the other side. Always floss your top thread into the tension disk or it may not settle in nicely. When you free motion you don't need to raise the pressure foot to move around. However, if you don't raise the foot when you rethread, the tension disks are not open and ready to receive. The bottom was a sweet intense trail of little loopy stitches. Now the good part of loopy stitches is that they do pull out. That is a good thing, as there were a million of them.

Now, what do you do at the beginning and end of your free motion stitch line? Do you tack a few stitches on top of each other to fix the thread, or do you just sew? I tried both. When I tacked I then just cut the thread. When I just stitched away I went back and pulled all the threads to the backside and then pulled them into the quilt batting with a self threading needle.

And then the whole question of cotton vs poly thread. And thread weight. So many decisions!