OMG!! I was starting to get into this writing thing and WordPress changed the way it works. I have not been in the mood to learn something new, being more in a tight, surviving mode than feeling free to explore in life. I tried to put in a picture to show how I had overcome what I thought to be a problem in quilting only to be stymied with how to write around it. I cannot explain how frustrating this was, and is, to me. Maybe, just maybe, I’ve made progress!!

This was the picture I wanted to share. I needed, or thought I needed, a way to allow my spool of thread a way to unspool sideways. I had to set a quilt aside because thread was breaking as I was free motion quilting, repeatedly. On another project that required more frequent thread changes, I noticed the thread was twisting when I had it unspooling from the top, and changing the orientation to horizontal has seemed to correct that.

This set-up is actually working for me, as odd and home rigged as it looks. (I simply don’t have a pin that holds the spool on the machine in a stable way.) BUT, I realized the breaking thread was caused by my beautifully pinned basting. I thought tight was best and was proud of how tight and straight I had it!

I finished quilting another piece last night and not once did the thread break. I wanted to gift that first quilt to my aunt. It is not my first quilt now. The new one is gorgeous, but not the happy flowery piece the first one was.

I have a quilt top from many years ago that I have hauled around unfinished. I prepared a back, basted and quilted a top that was living in the house before we were. (The story about it and the other already pieced tops was in another post.) But the Friendship Star quilt was my first start to finish. I haven’t revisited it since the revelation of the tight basting being the problem. I have the feeling, I may be doing a LOT of ripping out to redeem it – or I cut it up to make smaller quilts to be used on the dog beds.