Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Under the Needle

I put my strip quilt under the needle to start quilting it. It will be one of my contributions to the Quilt Angel project this year.
I did part of a strip (the one that is really under the needle there) with simple U shapes.  I was going to do something more elaborate.  In fact, I did that row and part of another before I checked to see how it was looking on the back! I did a row of what I call circles on a wavy line. And I did an angular meandering that crosses itself and makes rectangles.  Then I looked at the back -  YIKES!  It was awful.  Something was messing with my tension. I had to rip out a full row of circles. and abotu a third of a row of the angular design.  It is one thing to rip out something that doesn't cross itself.  But when you have sewn a circle and went over about a fourth of it again, that is hard to rip out.  I was totally disgusted. I ripped a lot longer than I had sewn. And I had to be really careful not to rip the fabric of the quilt.
What did the back look like?  Well it is called "eyelashing"  and it looks like this.
This is my "practice piece" that I use to set tension. On the curved areas they really look like eyelashes. I have no idea how I fixed it, but it is fixed. Hopefully I can really work on this quilt tomorrow night.


Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible unless otherwise stated. Foolishly posted "hate speech" comments will be swiftly removed.

8 comments:

Peg said...

Oooouuucchhh , I'm a beginner at machine quilting and haven't become that adventurous yet. My first stitch in the ditch was 3/4 completed then I found a piece about 5" long so the frog came visiting ;0). I'm trying to convince myself to 'have a go' and meander.

Peg xx

Barbara said...

I don't do machine quilting, but I know this issue! Usually re-threading my machine fixes things. Somehow, little gremlins seem to get into the works there and hang up the thread when I'm not looking. ;)

sewyouquilt2 said...

oh no! hopefully things go smoother "round two".

Vicki W said...

Oh I've done that soooooo many times!

Barb said...

Hate those eye lashes and totally hate ripping out.

Beth said...

Those eyelashes are why I haven't jumped in the deep end of FMQ. I am glad you got your tension sorted out, sorry you had to unsew.

Stray Stitches (Linda G) said...

I feel your pain! Having had to 'unstitch' quite a bit of circle fmq recently I know what you went through. Hopefully the rest of your quilting will go more smoothly.

Kathleen said...

Here's something I've been wondering, as a newbie. When you have to rip out quilting like this, do you try to leave thread tails wherever you stop removing stitches so you can knot and bury them? Is that even possible?