purple, tension and Tula Pink

It's Friday night and chores have been done, dinner has been eaten and the hubby is out to a movie with a niece.  Blogging and quilting, here I come!

First, I'd like to thank so many of you for your kind words regarding my new machine and its tension problems.  I was confident I could fix it, I just had to talk myself into trying.  Last Saturday, after much procrastination, I ran out of other things to do, so forced myself to take apart the bobbin mechanism and see what I could do.

This is the bobbin case.  It's supposed to come out.  But that green gunk on the screw?  Tells me I wasn't supposed to move that screw.  You know what that screw does?  Changes the bobbin tension.  And when your top tension is maxed out and you can feel the drag on your bobbin thread when you pull it out with your hand, you KNOW your bobbin tension needs to be loosened.  Oh yeah, and when you can see the top thread poking through on the back side.  That too is an indication.

So with a little elbow grease and a few tries, I had it not only moved, but sewing beautifully.  Top and bottom tension are now matched and I loosened the bobbin tension a little more than necessary so the top tension wasn't maxed out.  But had I not learned about adjusting tension from my longarm - a machine intended to have both top and bottom tensions adjusted - I probably never would have even had a clue where to start.  Guess all the struggles learning the longarm have paid off more than I imagined?!

With that out of the way, I was free to sew!  And my mojo came back.  You know how when things don't work right, you don't want to deal with them?  Well that's where my mojo went!

Onward to the remaining Rainbow Scrap Challenge purple blocks!

#16 city hall:

Templates.  Bleh.  But it came out okay.

#17 laundromat:

53 pieces.  And I've decided that those purple squares in the centers are because a man is doing this laundry and failed to properly sort lights from darks.  (Sorry guys, but I've met too many of you prone to this problem...)

#18 do not enter:

Last one for this month!  More templates.  Ack.  But it came out okay.

Wanna see all the purple stuff together?

Of course you do!

The tiny stars were leader-enders again.  I'm gonna get those 1080 blocks.  It might take 100 years, but I'm gonna get there!

Now I can move on to my UFO for the month - a pattern called The Benefit that has large pieces and is perfect for my Tula Pink Tabby Road fabrics.

But have you ever had fabric so pretty you didn't want to cut into it?  I just want to keep these awesome spotted and stripey kitties and pet them forever.  Yet, if I make them into a quilt, I can snuggle under them AND pet them!  While snuggling and petting real kitties.  Okay, I talked myself into it...time to cut!

Carefully trimmed selvages.  I'm not a selvage girl, but I gotta keep these and make something.  (Maybe I'll enlist my mom - she loves the things?)

I cut and cut and cut what felt like a million pieces, but it took a while to get fabric pairs matched up nicely, so I think that's what made it seem like it took FOR. EVER.  You see, the blocks are all pluses.  In three sizes and they all nest into each other.  Well, sort of.  There was also fussy cutting (trying not to lop any kitties heads off while still getting the pieces I needed out of fat quarters)...

By bedtime Wednesday, I had the above blocks sewn, but needed the design floor for the remaining layout.  Tonight, I removed the extra insulation via vacuum, wrangled actual cats and have this:

(Sorry now actual cat butts.  By this time, they'd lost interest.  It took a while.)

See what I mean about blocks nesting into each other?  This was tricky to pick up at this point, but with the photo and a few numbers pinned to stacks, I think I can do this without having it all laying there for me.  Which is a good thing because the hubby does not favor the middle of the living room floor being for quilting.  Who knows why?

I'm pretty excited, though.  It's just the middle of the month and I've gotten this far on a whole-quilt UFO!  But to be fair, this one wasn't all that hard.

Last night, because of the furry nature of my design floor and my lack of desire to remedy the situation, I decided to work a bit on Philip's blocks.  It didn't feel like I made a dent in the pile, but here's the before and after of the bin where block pieces are stored:

I've only made 15 blocks, but the whole quilt is only 56, so I'm about a quarter done.

Wanna see a few?

Whee!

Now to decide what to do with my remaining time.  There's always quilting, but with the hubby gone for at least 2 more hours, maybe it's time for a movie?  One where I don't have to listen to mumbling about stupid girly movies that have an actual plot and no bloody violence?  Hmmm...  I'm sure the fur babies would approve...

Happy quilting,

Katie