No Problem

I just finished a quilt from Hell. It wasn't badly made or ugly, but let's just say the quilting has not gone well.

First, I quilted the wrong top and sent it off to the wrong customer who had a friend picking it up. How can that happen? Picture a 400 square foot shop with 5 tables, a longarm (5'x12"), and approximately 25 quilts waiting to be quilted plus lots of other stuff. Two quilts came in the same day and I must have switched the paper work. Oops! Not a big deal, she's bringing it back, but now I am behind as I have the original top to quilt quickly before she returns to pick it up.

It's a t-shirt quilt, shouldn't be a big deal, I have quilted these for this customer before and she does nice work. However, from row one, it's a nightmare. One problem is variegated thread on top which changes it's weight as the color variations occur. Another problem is the backing -- perfectly good muslin but the thread count must be about 2000 as the brand new needle wants to skitter across it and create what's called needle deflection. Third problem, it's a t-shirt quilt --I know I said no problem, but when the machine travels from the t-shirt fabrics to the thinner cotton fabric to the plastic type designs, all of this creates uneven tension, and no matter how carefully I watch for issues, there's a lot of start and stop, and taking out of rows, and repairing of spots, etc. I worked an extra 2-1/2 hours at the shop and went straight to Kai's baseball game which went long. It was fun and they won but I didn't get home until almost 9 pm.

The quilt went home with me to allow me to take out a row of stitching while I watched the last hour of American Idol (Adam should have won.) When I brought it back in this morning, I put the row of freehand peacock feathers back in, and checked over the back carefully to find and repair any other dropped stitches. I have declared it finished. Guess what? The customer through no fault of her own -- she's also having a bad day --cannot come to pick it up until next week.

That's ok. It's done.