New year, new logo, new goals and I am all in with A Lovely Year of Finishes. This challenge blog run by my friend Melissa and her friend Shanna has kept me motivated to set goals each month and try to get them completed by month's end. I love checking things off my list almost as much as I love starting them. It's the in-between where I get bogged down. Participating each month in ALYOF has helped me so much in the year and half I have been following along. I'm very excited to see what we can accomplish together in 2015!
My goal for January is actually part of my unfinished goal for November. In November my sewing machine and I had a bitter disagreement about Free Motion Quilting my jelly roll race quilt. I wanted to quilt it in time to give away to charity before Christmas because it was in Christmas colors. My machine wanted to break threads and tie them into bird's nests. My machine won. I was so frustrated by the end of the month that I didn't even sew on it in December.
Thankfully some lovely blog readers gave me helpful suggestions and I am happy to report that my sewing machine and I are on sewing terms again. The biggest problem was my thread. I had tried 3 different kinds, but wasn't paying attention the weight. I assumed all my aurifill threads were 50 weight, but I had been using threads from a pack I won last year. They were thick and did not like my machine at all. DOH!
I also changed my needle size and that helped too. On January 1st my goal was just to finish up the machine quilting on my jelly roll race quilt. I'm happy to report that the machine quilting is already done, so my new goal will be to add the binding and complete my quilt. The binding is my favorite part.
The best part about all the struggles I had with my machine is that I stopped caring about trying to get it perfect. There was no way I was going to rip out all that thick thread, and start over. This was supposed to be a quick and easy project to donate to our guild's charity stash. I just put the pedal to the metal and got it whipped out . By the end of quilting this beast I felt more confident. I'm not proud of my stitching, but I am putting it out there anyway so other beginners can feel more confident to try too.
Now it's your turn to link up your January goals. I'll be back tomorrow with my creative goals for all of 2015.
5 comments:
Your free motion quilting turned out AWESOME. I'll bet it feels great to have that part done. Just think, you will soon be one ahead for this Christmas! I will have to look up this challenge. I have many UFOs!
Congratulations on the quilting finish Heather! Perfection is highly overrated....
You will definitely meet that goal! I think the quilting looks fine. I like that you got creative and tried something decorative in the middle of the meandering.
I've heard it said--Done is better than perfect! I'm sure your quilt will make the recipient very happy. I can't believe you love doing bindings, that's my least favorite part of the whole process!
That is a very cute quilt and the backing color is perfect. Your quilting looks great, and you are right about the binding -- that's my favorite part, too.
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