heating up

Summer is finally here and the temps are getting over 100 every day now. At least for the last 2 days. What better thing to do than stay inside and quilt?

Here's what I've been up to.

My friend Carla is coming over tomorrow to drop off 28 quilt tops from last week's quilt day and to pick up all of the quilts I have quilted to take to her sister to bind. She is going camping for a while and I will have some time to play catch up with these quilt tops while she is gone

Then, in a couple of weeks, we will trade again.

I have been working like crazy these couple of days trying to get as many quilts done as I can for her to take. I have about 4 quilts left that have backs picked out and about 10 quilts that need backings picked. I will have to take some time tomorrow when the other quilts get here to sort through and match backings. That makes the whole quilting go faster, when I don't have to think :)

I also discovered a new love today. Coats and Clark 70 wt bobbin thread. It is 100% polyester thread and I did a whole quilt with just one bobbin. It normally takes me 2 1/2 bobbins to do a quilt and not having to change bobbins saves me about 10 minutes per quilt. So, now I can do a quilt in under 20 minutes. I only bought one spool of black so tomorrow I will go back to JoAnn's and buy some more. They only had black and white thread so I will have to see what is available online to buy.

I wasn't too sure if the polyester bobbin thread would be ok with the cotton top thread so I called my local quilt shop that does machine quilting and the lady says she uses that combination all of the time. She said the only thing to worry about is getting the tension right since the weights of the thread are so different. The top thread is 40 weight and the bobbin thread is 70 weight. Big difference and that is why you can get so much more thread on a bobbin. But, I didn't have any tension problems. In fact, my tension was actually better with the two quilts I did with this thread. So, now I have a faster way of getting quilts done that will be better in the long run.

The thread is normally $7.99 a spool for 1800 yards, but with the 50% coupons that JoAnn's is always having I figure $4 for a spool of thread that will make my life easier, I can't go wrong. Too bad it doesn't come in other colors :)