Breaking thread... not fun!

The free motion quilting has been going really well until my thread started breaking.... and not just once or twice but about 2 seconds after I would get started up again it would break again.  Needless to say I was very frustrated and had to walk away and take a break.  I have been doing a lot of reading on the internet trying to find other people's opinions on machine quilting thread and discovered that many out there have had the same experience that I have had with the particular brand of thread that I was using.  I found a lot of great suggestions and I am in the process of trying one out, Gutermann, and so far it has been working great, not a single break yet.  I only have a little more to quilt but at the moment I am letting my machine have a break to cool down.  Hopefully here soon I can post some pics so you can see how it looks... it's not perfect by no means, but I think it isn't too bad for my very first FMQ experience.

Machine Quilting - Finishing Up

Yesterday I tried machine quilting for the first time... I used a walking foot and did straight lines and that didn't work out so well.  After ripping those stitches out I knew I had to do something different so I tried free motion quilting using the stippling design.  At first that didn't work out well at all, once I got started going good the thread would break... so I thought it was a tension issue, and it wasn't.  So after a few hours of that I decided to try a different machine and WOW!!!  It worked like a charm!!!  So I am still not sure what the problem was with the first machine (my very old Kenmore rescued from the Goodwill store) but my other machine (brand new Singer) worked like a champ... that's funny cause my Kenmore aka Shirley, always gets the job done, but not this time...

Yea! I started a blog!

I have wanted to start a blog for a while now but never thought I had the time... until today... I realized that if I spent half the time I do playing games on facebook then I had plenty of time to start a blog.  So today I have traded in my games for blogging!  I am currently working on my first custom order quilt but there is still so much that I have to learn about quilting and I am at a stand still due to lack of knowledge/experience.  I am attempting to machine quilt for the first time and I keep running into tucks and puckers and they are very frustrating... once I get past this I will be done and that feeling of "completion" is a GREAT feeling... well, it's back to exploring the internet for information and great ideas so that I can complete this project and move on to the next.