day 40

Yes, it has been 40 days of my vacation so far. I have 32 days left before having to go back to work. The rest of the summer is going to go fast. I have a mini vacation planned for 3 weeks from tomorrow to take my daughter back to school and to visit my parents. Every day counts when you have a huge goal of 150 quilts to get finished up. I am not good at keeping track of numbers so I'm glad I have this blog to do that for me. I love being able to look back at the pictures and see just how far I've come with my quilting skills too.

Here are three quilts I did yesterday and one so far from today. I say so far, because I really need to get a bunch of quilts done before Saturday when my friend Carla is going to take all of the quilts I have quilted to her sister to bind for me. Hooray! I now have a binding buddy to finish up these quilts so I can focus on the quilting. This will make the quilting go so much faster.

This quilt today really gave me troubles. The thread broke about 20 times. At first, I thought it was the thread. I started using YLI, which I have used before, but not recently. I really love Signature thread. It comes on cones and is very inexpensive. As I am quilting this summer, I am making a list of all of the colors I would have liked to have for each of the quilts. I have quite the list going so for Christmas I can order lots more colors. Because I don't have every color there is, I go with what I do have and the quilts look just fine. I find the color I use the most is called Baguette. It is an off white/tan color and I plan to order a couple of those next year.

Back to this quilt. So, I noticed that every time I went over the thin stripe, the thread would break. The thin stripes have some gold in them, but it isn't glittery so I wasn't sure if that was it the fabric or the thread. So, I switched thread back to the Signature. The thread kept breaking every time it went over the thin strips. So, I switched needles and the thread stopped breaking.

Grrr. Now, why didn't I just change the needle in the first place? I hope I remember this the next time I have thread breaking troubles. And I'm going to try the YLI again, just to see if it works this time because I have two giant spools of that thread too.

Hoping to get one more quilt quilted tonight to add to the stack of quilts :)

Oh, and I bought a sewing machine today for $30. It is an older model Kenmore that the owner kept clean as a whistle. It sews so nicely and so quietly. I have it set up in the kitchen so that I can get my kids started sewing quilt tops together for me too. I tried it out today on some flannel strips that I had and put together two quilt tops with no tension troubles or skipped stitches.

John 14:6: Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.