If you have been sewing or quilting any length of time I know you have occasionally had a project that seemed to fight you every step of the way. I have been dealing with such a project for the past several months and, through persistence and a little bit of acceptance of some of the results that aren’t quite what I originally had in mind, I am very close to finishing it. It is my two birds quilt project for my YouTube channel.
The techniques are not difficult, the design is good and problems in the pattern and instructions have been eliminated. It was an experimental quilt project in many ways. I had several personal problematic challenges with a few little annoyances here and there that only occasionally happen with me or my projects and a few small machine and health events.
During the course of making this project, I redesigned parts of it several times; ruined the beginning with a mistake on my part and had to reorder fabric to restart it; discovered the way I had planned to accomplish some of the parts were not the best route and I had to correct them; my quilting machine got some fluff and thread caught in the thread path that I couldn’t get out on my own and I spent several hours on the phone working with my wonderful Bernina tech Lew who helped me fix it and basically we serviced my machine as we worked through the problem; I discovered I did not like the way all the thread colors worked though I loved the threads, so had to order new threads and work around the wait; had a part of the quilting I messed up and ripped out and requilted; and finally, abnormally struggled with getting the binding on for some reason (perhaps I was out of practice). But each problem has been overcome and the quilt is lovely.
That is now all behind me, the videos are filmed except one small finishing up, and the quilt is lovely. I still need to do the final wash to remove all the marks and refresh the fabric, and the videos are being edited into several segments by my excellent family member editor.
In the midst of all of this I had cataract surgery in both eyes and a few other things that delayed my work on the project. But all in all, I am delighted with the results of the eye surgery and have dealt with the other delays and bumps in the road.
Sew in a few weeks now, the two birds videos will be published along with a workbook with the pattern and instructions in case someone wants to make one themselves. And the cool thing is that I have been through the instructions, patterns, and making of the quilt and already made all the mistakes for you, so you won’t have to make them yourself. LOL. Therefore, I am pretty sure if you decide to join me and make the quilt you will find it really fun and free of such challenges.
I talked over new ideas with my family last weekend and am very excited about upcoming projects for 2022 and look forward to sharing them with you all. I fully believe that I will be producing more frequent videos with some really fun projects and I hope you will join me or at the very least watch the videos and continue to read my blogs. I am thinking of adding some podcast blogs once in a while (all sound, no videos).
NEWS: I have put several of my quilts on a really good sale to help pay for some upcoming expenses. Go take a look here: https://bjfabricartist.com/shop
Sew happy everyone and have fun in your studios!