Switching Gears

I was sprinting towards the finish on Shady Lanes when I hit a snag.  Or rather, a series of skipped stitches.  Checking tension, swapping needles had no effect.  Online advice suggested maybe the the thread?  Sure enough, I swapped thread and suddenly the section of fabric that would not hold a stitch quilted up, no problem.

Well, dang.

I spent several hours picking out all the cinnamon stitching I had done in preparation to switch to different thread.  What a stinker.  Could have been worse.  I contemplated slapping the binding on before finishing the quilting, just so I could stitch binding in the evenings, but I decided it was smarter to set it aside.

I hung Shady Lanes back on the wall (suddenly my walls aren't so bare!) and moved to the Icy Colors quilt.  The quilting I did on Shady Lanes gave me enough confidence to start work on this one.  I hemmed and hawed over colors and patterns.  Eventually I ditched the idea of using multiple colored threads and committed to doing it all in the new grey thread I bought.  I'm a little nervous about that.  I like the designs I picked... but I'm also unsure how that will come out full scale.  We'll see!

I have notes pinned to the wall on which parts of the quilt get what type of quilting so I can see them as I quilt.  I'm hoping that once I do a few blocks I won't have to reference the wall so much.

I only quilted one block before I swapped projects again!  You can see Icy Colors wadded on the table and piecing happening under the sewing machine.  Project Quilting 13.4 is out this week.  

The challenge is diamonds.  A storm at sea quilt jumped immediately to mind but it seemed bigger and more complicated than I wanted to take on right now.  I researched another pattern I liked and played with some colors, but the Storm kept calling to me.  Guess what I'm doing?  

 

I found a paper pieced pattern, which allows me to keep to the mug rug size of projects for this season's challenges.  I've sewed wrong colors together or in the wrong order - it would have been better to have cut all the pieces and laid them out before assembling.  On the other hand, I'm psyched to be able to keep this so small.  I think it will be about 10" when complete.  I'm really hopping to have the top pieced together by tomorrow night (there's never enough time).

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