In the past year I’ve spend hours dealing with my sewing machine. Dropping it off no less than SEVEN times to get it repaired (for a tension issue, “we’ve never seen before”). I couldn’t do anything with topstitching, including quilting, because I never knew when I’d get little loops on the bottom of my sewing. Needless to say I was frustrated. And I finally broke. With my meanest voice I told them the last time they called that, “I can’t wait, I want to talk to some one RIGHT NOW.” Yes, being able to curse would have been nice in the situation, but I just don’t have that in me (besides, who wants to hear that?). Well they finally broke and admitted they could not fix the machine, and gave me a new one. I was so happy, and have been sewing like a mad woman ever since.
Of course my first thought was to start a million new projects, and I did do the bedding and baby doll carrier, but then I got sensible. It helped that I realized backing my languishing quilt tops would use a lot of fabric (I may have a slight stash problem). So I pulled out the old tops and got to work. This one was (poorly) pin basted last year before I realized the severity of the problems with my machine.

I set out with no plan from the start on this thing. And once I started working on it I realized I was SO rusty with my free motion quilting. As a result this is going to be more of a sampler of sorts. I think I’m ok with that. I took these photos with my phone to ask Sciarrino for some more quilting ideas. She gave me a couple of good ones so I’m excited to keep going on it.
Of course I’m not perfect…

And when Bj said we could go to the biggest/weirdest fabric store around on the way home for our anniversary trip I said sure and stocked up on knits, including swimsuit knits! I’m so crazy. Hopefully it translates into crazy awesome knit clothing and not a bunch of stash that sits there for a while…