The Right Thread Makes All the Difference

After struggling through FMQ with some cotton quilting thread I had, I was about ready to give up. I tried everything I could think of to keep the thread from breaking. I changed my needle, adjusted tension, re-threaded the bobbin. Cleaned my machine. Nothing helped. A last ditch effort involved purchasing some Isacord thread, recommended by Leah Day. If this didn't work, I was going to give up on free motion quilting all together.

I'm extremely pleased to tell you that it worked like a charm. I've been playing around with FMQ for the last two hours and haven't had my thread break once! WOOOO! YEAH! GO TEAM! And suprisingly, I'm having an easier time with the small concentrated patterns than I am with the large sweeping stippling type patterns.

Pebbles take For-Ev-Er to do

Actually, I solved two problems here - I wanted to practice FMQ before I quilted with it, but I couldn't stomach wasting fabric that could be put to better use. However, I happen to have a box of random 9" - 11" squares that I picked up. I can't use this fabric with other projects, because I don't think the fabric has been washed. Also, some of it is the ugliest fabric I've seen yet. Solution: use it for FMQ practice.

When all was said and done, I started requilting the purple cat quilt. This is the one that I purchased clear thread for, which kept breaking. Of course. But I picked a design and practiced it, and now am quilting!

The colors are a little funny due to the fact that it was located under my sewing machine when I took the picture. I still need practice, but I'm finally getting somewhere.

In other news, I picked out five more star quilt blocks to make with white backgrounds. This way I can make a decent sized baby quilt with the nine blocks. After that, I'll be switching to the black background star blocks.

This one is called Maine.

Now that I have hopefully solved my quilting problems, I may be able to get a couple of those UFOs off my list.