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aarrrrgggghhhhh….. to rip or not to rip????

The new I Spy baby quilt is simply NOT working out for me. I bought this softbook panel a long time ago. But decided that it was too big and flimsy to be a good soft book, although it would probably make a great I Spy quilt instead.

I took a long time cutting and piecing the quilt, and another good few months before I sandwiched the quilt. I got the quilting done ONLY because I needed to free up some space in my WIP drawer. So, its a ‘difficult’ quilt for me since the start.

I SEE...

Benji loves the quilt and had a great time reading the text and ‘spying’ the images. But he declared it as ‘TOO SMALL’ for his bed. My son loves big quilts that have generous overhang. Sigh…

I SEE...

The ultimate blow was when I realised that the binding was a real hot mess – fabric is from Sevenberry – and even after 5 rounds of Synthrapol treatment, the binding could not be saved (although I got the reds from the main quilt out).

I SEE...

Now, I’m wondering if I should simply rip out the binding or leave it as-is???

Chain piecing blooper

I’m a fan of chain piecing. It is quick, thread saving and also saves me the hassle of trimming/tossing those long tails of threads.

This week, I resuscitated a 2.5 year-old WIP that has all the pieces prepped and all ready to go. So I sat down to start working on the 1st step that called for 120 small blocks. I was feeding the patches almost brainlessly for about 30 mins and I thought: “The machine sounds a little weird. Need to put some oil when I reload the bobbin”. And then I stood up to stretch my legs and admire the long chain behind to machine to find that… there’s NO chain! I was probably ‘air-sewing’ for the past 10 mins or so, pushing patches through the footer when I had already ran out of bobbin thread!

ARGH. I cleaned out the machine, fitted in a loaded bobbin and said Good Night. The next evening, I started over again and took time to glance BEHIND the footer once in a while. 😉

Chain piecing

Do you know the Bernina 820 has a great bobbin warning feature that tells you that you are running low on your bobbin thread. And that each jumbo bobbin has a capacity about 40% more than the normal ones.