Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Losing Thread Chicken {Quilting in Progress}

This weekend I had *big plans* for knocking out some finishes. During the week I layered and pinned both my Ohio Star quilt for this month's Island Batik Ambassador project and my Four Square quilt top that I made on retreat.

I had no issues quilting my Ohio Star quilt -- hooray! I used a gold thread for the quilting and did a simple meander quilting motif for this quilt. It is trimmed, but I need to prep the binding. Here's a sneak preview:


I had a two yard cut of this pink print with flowers in my stash that I thought would be perfect for the backing of my Four Square quilt. It was *just* wide enough! I decided to use my mint Aurifil thread to quilt this quilt. I thought that since it was a baby quilt, I had enough thread on my partially used cone of thread.

You can guess where this is going -- I lost thread chicken on this one.

My penchant for dense quilting really came back to bite me because had I quilted my swirls 10% larger, I would have been able to squeak by with the thread that I had. Just 10%!!

Here's the sad corner of the quilt that is waiting to be quilted:


Of course, this happened on Sunday and I live no where near anywhere that sells Aurifil thread, much less a place that sells Aurifil thread that is open on a Sunday. So I ordered a small spool of thread (and four yards of clearance fabric for a backing) and hopefully it ships this week so that one night I can spend a grand five minutes finishing the quilting on this quilt.

I went ahead and trimmed the quilt, and in the meantime, I'll be using the rest of the backing fabric to make a binding for this quilt.




I have lost thread chicken before (very notably on my Summer Patio quilt) but this time it really grinds my gears.

Sharing at Wednesday Wait Loss!

8 comments:

  1. I hate when that happens! I got burnt twice ordering some thread and finding it not in stock....hope you win the thread ordering game!

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  2. Meanwhile, you'll just have to pet that pretty backing fabric. I love those little flowers!

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  3. I have borrowed a cone from a fellow longarm quilter in town and bought her a new one so I could finish a project on time! I was lucky to be friends with the prior quilt shop owner and if I needed something from her shop on a Sunday or Monday (the days she was closed), I could usually call her and get what I needed. I'm very lucky that the little town of 900 that I live outside of even has a quilt shop!! I never want to run out so I have a tendency to buy more than I need, just so I don't run into a problem! Hope your order gets there quickly!!

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  4. Oh but it's all about the perfect thread--and that is worth waiting for! I was just putting a border on a quilt, noting that if I was very thrifty about how I went about it, I *should* have enough fabric for the backing as well. As I was pinning the borders on, I noticed a major flaw in the fabric (don't usu see that in moda!) and so I had to cut another strip....and there went my backing. Of course, I'm glad I saw it instead of maybe after I'd quilted the thing? (yikes!) And now I'm being forced to do some creative patching on the backing--something I love to see, just don't always want to take the time to do. Hope your thread shows up asap but in the meantime, maybe something great will come out of the delay?

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  5. I play yarn chicken, and thankfully the last few times I have won. I do not want to play thread chicken. LOL!

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  6. Sad! I hate it when I lose chicken. For me, it's frequently binding chicken. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose.

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  7. Hopefully you've gotten your thread and you've finished off your 4 Square Quilt. The quilting on both projects looks great!

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  8. Thread chicken, great name! So sorry that happened. I look forward to seeing the finish. Thanks for sharing on Wednesday Wait Loss.

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