Look, I'm quilting!

First of all, Happy New Year!

And second, I'm quilting I'm quilting!

Yesterday I called up Purl to discuss my quilting hardships and wound up sprinting out of my house with my swatch, batting and muslin in tow to make it into the shop for some advice before they closed at 3. Can we all just praise Joelle for a moment? She's made a quilter out of me. She hauled out a machine, tried quilting my swatch (no problems, ahem) and suggested I dismantle and clean the whole thing, which she also demonstrated. It was very encouraging to see quilting actually occur, right there on my sad little swatch, and I went off rearing to go.

I got home and gave my machine a very through once-over. And then: quilt magic. Hurray! I think the cleaning definitely helped but what probably helped even more was actually lowering the walking foot onto the quilt sandwich. I know, I know... this is in the "check to see if your machine is plugged in" list of questions for the customer service reps, but you see, my sandwich seemed so fat and wedged under the foot it didn't seem like putting down the presser foot would actually do anything. Oh, except pull the fabric through and prevent stitches from piling up underneath. Duh.

I happily quilted the top of the potholder and half of one of the hand covers. And then, disaster - NO MORE THREAD.

I am so bummed! I was right there, in the store, with all of the miles of thread, just yesterday! And I bought none! Not to mention it's rainy and grim here today and the perfect day to bond with my sewing machine and my last day of vacation and I can't finish my stinking potholders! Sniffle.

Well, I guess I will have to find some other project with which to occupy myself today... there must be something around here.