On with the experiment...

So, I did get in a little bit of quilting while home on vacation. Not as much as I had hoped for, but unfortunately, the night we returned from Aruba, my son injured his knee while working with his football trainer. We have had x-ray's and know that there is no broken bones, but the Orthopedic said it is definitely NOT nothing. We are going for a MRI, but at this point, he says it could be anything from a severe sprain to a torn ACL. As you can imagine, we are praying for the former.

Anyway, with the hiccups of life, I did get some quilting in. I added stars to my experimental piece, using a variegated Superior Rainbows thread. I had to play quite a bit with the tension, to keep the bottom thread from showing through (got to go buy some extra bobbins for the 830... I am wasting much too much thread as I move from color to color). I have the tension set to 1, which seems to be my standard, whenever working with the Superior Rainbows thread on the 830. I think I when I quilt this piece, I will quilt stars inside of the thread appliqued stars. We'll see....
Next, I finished adding the highlights to the green ribbon segments. I got impatient and didn't wait until I picked up the light green Madeira. Instead, I just used white. I think it works fine.

Then I decided to figure out how to loosen the bobbin tension on the 830, so I could try Bobbin Play. Hey, this is an experimental piece.. right? Much to my surprise, after actually doing it, it is much easier than I thought it would be... the directions gave me a little scare. First, in the USA, not sure many of us know what a 'lug' is, screw, nut, bolt... yes, but a lug? So it took me a second to figure out what they were talking about. Once I did, I used the universal tool, moved the bobbin lug 2 spaces to the left and away I went.


I am not sure I like the look. It is a Superior Razzle Dazzle. While I like the Razzle Dazzle and the effect, I think this particular color may be too dark for this piece. But I will wait a day or two to decided before ripping it out.


What do you think?

Now remember this piece is wonky, because the pink piece was cut the wrong size. (If you missed the earlier post... I couldn't get the top squared to save my life. After ripping it out more than a couple of times, I realized that the pink piece is actually 1/2" larger than it should be. Of course, since the black was on, I decided to leave it.) The piece was not being made for any particular purpose, so instead, it became a learning or experimental piece. None of the thread play techniques had I done before. When it is finished, I will do a 'lessons learned' post, as I have learned quite a bit on this piece.

I am going to try to block it tomorrow. First to try and get it to behave a little and second to give me some time to think about how I will quilt it. I have been thinking about trying a square feather inside the center square. But who knows..... I know I am thinking about not making this a square piece... if I can at least get it to lay flat, I don't care it is a square, rectangle or ??????

OK... Good Night... it is back to work tomorrow :-)