Carrie's quilt

Carrie brought me another of her amazing applique quilts. Just realizing how much this photo does not do it justice.

Carrie prefers cotton thread and I just happened to have a small cone of light pink Aurifil. I had used the 40wt Aurifil from the bigger cones with no trouble. Day 1: no trouble/perfect tension. Day 2: skipping stitches, bad tension, and thread breakage. What the hey?!

I tried everything. I changed my needle. I turned my needle just a bit. Maybe it wasn't aligned right. I adjusted the bobbin tension. I adjusted the top tension. I cleaned out the lint from the bobbin area. I checked the bobbin itself for lint. I checked the tension discs for lint. I sent two longarmmers emergency help requests. They suggested all the things I had thought of. We were all stumped.

Then, as I was test quilting on a sample piece, I glanced over a the cone and realized that the thread was pulling off the cone unevenly. There would be little jumps, which led to breakage and skipped stitches. Only problem, I don't have a horizontal thread holder on my George. Solution? Turn the whole thing on its side and stick the end into a leftover piece from my design wall. Back to perfect tension, yay!

Did I mention that longarms are finicky? Goodness sakes!

It was smooth sailing the rest of the way, thank goodness. Don't think I could take any more of that stress!

Isn't this squirrel adorable?

This one is my favorite. I love that bunny with his sweet little puffy tail.

Thanks Carrie! I had to keep stopping to admire the perfect appliqued curves.