That Ugly Place

Last weekend I went to Chicago. Went to the Brookfield zoo and it was wonderful! The animals were great and some of them were actually awake and active... but today I went to an ugly place. I was sewing some samples for a class I'll be teaching and nothing was going right... the bobbin was lumping, needles were breaking... I just didn't understand! I took the needle plate cover off to disengage some bobbin thread that was tangled and saw some fuzz and lint... so I grabbed my tweezers and took it out... on a whim, I took out that black thing... you know.. the thing the bobbin sits in... the thing that nevers goes back in as easily as it comes out.... the black thing that covers the ugly place...... oh my stars!!!! There was a lump of **stuff** under there the size of texas!! it was grey and ugly and had things in it... it had sparkles in it from some felt I had sewn a few weeks ago... surely it hadn't been that long since I'd been there.... I clean and oil every month and swap out the 2 combo machines every six months. Either I've been doing excessive amounts of sewing... or I mentally block that black thing. It comes out soooooooooooooo easily and goes back in soooooooooooo hard! No matter how I line it up... no matter how careful I am... I have to stand on my head with my tongue out and do the black thingy dance to make it go back in..... I took of picture of it...... it's incredible!!! All of that crud came from under the black thingy in the ugly place........ I gotta start paying more attention!

After I got the crud out and the black thingy back in ... I resumed todays projects. I needed to make 3 fabric bowls ... 2 are samples for a class I'll be teaching and one will have a matching table runner and be a thank you gift. Each bowl is a bit different even though they all started from the same square. The apple bowl is much deeper because I cut the darts wider.... and the thank you gift bowl has the points cut off the corners.... each of the three bowls is reversible too.

I also finished up a table runner for a button quilting class. It's called Square Peg in a Round Hole ... it's made from homespuns so it gets that frayed edge look and it's quilted with buttons... its a great project to show off antique or unusual buttons. I just have to hand stitch the binding and it's finished.... I also have to hand stitch some binding on a wallet I'm trying out... it has a small change pocket... a couple of credit card slots and a bill section.... it's lightly quilted and sort of squarish.

I spent most of the week writing up the instructions for a Cotton Theory Quilting class I'm doing on Saturday.... I also needed to get all the samples done for my classes....plus the supply lists. There's a meet the teacher thing at the quilt shop and we need to have us and our samples there so people can ask us questions and hopefully sign up for our classes. It's something new we're trying so we'll see how it goes..... I'm doing fabric bowls, magic pillow cases, Portables, the Button Quilting thing and a class on designing your own fabric bowls... it's an artsy fartsy type class ...and I was asked to do it.... I don't do artsy fartsy.......but I think this will be fun....

Tonite I'll work on my bindings while I watch some TV. The rest of this week will be doing 2 more wallets of a different style....printing up the stuff for saturdays class and going over the lesson to be sure I haven't forgotton anything...and the table runner that's part of the thank you gift.... if there's still time (yeah right) I might do a block or two on the Underground Railroad Wall Hanging...

Oh.... and in case you are wondering.........you only have 16 weekends left til christmas!! so ya better get moving on those gifts!

Til next week

Lish