I had just starting FMQ around the flowers when the tension went WACKO. Yep, I had run out of bobbin thread. My Nolting CLX doesn't have a warning for a low bobbin or empty bobbin. Despite my chronic tinnitus, I can hear the difference in the machine when the bobbin runs out. I don't sew for very long without bobbin thread. I do, however, sew a long time when I run out of bobbin thread on the 201 or the 301. That's maddening. Some folks wind two bobbins and use one on top of these vintage machines so that when the top runs low, that means the bobbin is running low, too. Not me.  I ..read more

  I am not fond of this flimsy. I bought it when visiting Asheville, NC at Asheville Cotton Company. The panel caught my eye and it was on sale. So I bought eight, because I couldn't buy seven. I should hae cut the strips smaller so that the hexagons would be smaller. I didn't. I struggled with the layout, I couldn't fit the panel in the center without adding back some of the border. I didn't give up. I persisted. I call this quilt my Elizabeth Warren quilt.  The flimsy is 46 long by 48 wide. I had some leftover batting to use up. When I got far enough into the quilting, it was time ..read more

  I pieced this batting on the Kenmore 158.1814. It looked great coming off the machine and when I placed it on the fleece backing on the frame. By the time I landed here in the quilting it was a wrinkled mess. Shit. I cut out the stitching and trimmed up both edges. Then I overlapped the edges and drew a serpentine line along the edge and cut it out.  It's not the neatest cutout. I hope that the batting stays put. I quilted over it but my design is quite large, so......  I finished this baby quilt in just over an hour with just over one bobbin. Some of the flowers are wonky ..read more

 I now have a  dot com called FMQStudios.  M. named me that after she spent enough time in the studio on the longarm listening to me swear with increasing ferocity as I pieced a quilt. I don't even remember which one it was. Almost all my quilts start out as "the quilt." As I grow weary of the tedious piecing, "the quilt" becomes "the g__ Da__ quilt." Finally, as I stitch on the borders, it has morphed into "the g-- Da-- F------ quilt."  I created a FB page called FMQStudios for some odd reason. Did I think I wanted to create a business? Dunno. https://www.facebook.com ..read more

 It seems that wearing a mask in the US during a deadly pandemic is a political statement. I honestly don't understand it. I am a nurse. I have worn a mask for hours at a time during surgery and when caring for patients in isolation. I never felt hypoxic or sick. So folks who claim that O2 levels drop and CO2 levels increase are full of shit. I started making a three pleated mask in mid-March when a friend of a friend asked me to help make masks to send to her daughter in Michigan who was on the front lines there. I was absolutely appalled that there was not enough PPE. I was angry that ..read more

 I have been in therapy with my various sewing machines. It seems that I prefer my 201-1. The others are coming to grips with my favoritism. We all acknowledge that I love them all, but, truly one gets most of my attention.  As machines, this doesn't seem to make much difference in how they respond to me. For that, I am grateful. This One Block Wonder was pieced on my 201-1. I did stitch the blocks together with the 201-2. I needed both hands to match the points. I sent this off to Canada to a friend who fell in love with the fabric when she visited last spring. Seriously, she walke ..read more

All of Vermont has one area code. I imagine Wyoming is like that, too. Oh, North and South Dakota, Montana, and Rhode Island keep company with Vermont and Wyoming. I never knew. Nor did I care. Now that I live in the 802, we Vermonters refer to our state thusly, I am rather proud of it. "It" being one area code for the whole state. There is a twitter hashtag for it, I believe. I only troll on twitter. Off and on. That shit just depresses me. I love Vermont. "Way up by Canada," Ingrid declares every time I call her.  She seems to think I am in some foreign country. So much so, that she th ..read more

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 I have a Nolting CLX 20 Long-arm. I keep a log to track hours since needle change and last oiling. It was time to oil today. I dutifully dropped one drop of oil onto each of the oil wick ports on the top of the machine head this afternoon. When I turned on the machine for warm-up I heard a distinct squeak. It drove me absolutely nuts. I waited a few minutes to see if oil would reach this squeak. Nope.  This squeak was clearly a cry for lubrication. I cut the power to the machine, turned the hand-wheel and could hear a whisper of a squeak in two spots of the full turn of the wheel.&n ..read more

 I have an abundance of fabric scraps.  It seriously pains me to throw away fabric. I remember visiting a friend who did home decor and she threw away scraps that were huge! I mean three inches by thirty inches. WTAF? Consequently I have bins of fabric scraps. Admittedly, I get anxious when I look at all these scraps. I am approaching my eighth decade (that means that I am almost 70) and I don't exercise daily. You figure it out.  I simply cannot bring myself to discard perfectly good fabric that I paid 7 dollars a yard for. Yes, my fabric scraps are that old. There are others t ..read more