Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Machine Quilting Epic FAIL

I started this evening out all excited since I was going to begin the machine quilting on my Eye Spy quilt.  I got a few bobbins on the go and went to town on doing the column quilting and now I am sitting here on the verge of tears HATING what I have done so far.....My lines are worse than a drunk monkey attempting sewing for the first time.

From far away its not so bad....


But get close up - DAMN - what the heck happened?!?!?!  


Seriously it looks much worse in person.....


I have decided to push through and see how it looks with the other echoing done and if it STILL looks drunken monkey'esque I am going to attempt to cover it up or at least detract from it with attempting some FMQ in all the cream rectangles.  I figure by then nothing I do to it could make it worse so I might as well make it something interesting to look at!  I have done TOO much machine quilting to the quilt top to sit with a seam ripper for hours and hours and hours on end to rip it all out.  

I'm sorry, I usually try to be positive and happy on my blog but after laying my quilt out and seeing the mess I created I feel so deflated and bummed.  Thankfully my kids will love it no matter how weird the quilting is but I know its all that I am going to see....grrrrrrr!  

Ok - lets turn this into a learning experience for me........I know what happened - I'm not used to working with a quilt so big and it kept pulling, I am using a different batting (a poly batting that I have never used before and HATE and will never use again, its cotton batting only for this girl from now on), and I was in too much of a hurry to see the results.  There.  I have my reasons for my drunk monkey sewing BUT it still doesn't make me feel any better BUT I know that I can learn from this and hopefully I can keep the drunk monkey at bay so it doesn't make another appearance on my quilt tops anymore.  

Thanks for stopping by - see you tomorrow (and I promise I won't be such a Debbie Downer...).

3 comments:

  1. Your quilting looks fine from Texas, Kari. I say "Go with the Drunk Monkey Quilting" and just make more wavy lines as though that's what you intended all along. It already looks pretty !

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  2. I like drunk monkey. I'm going to take that phrase and make it my own. I ran into the same problem when quilting a large surface and I have a number of projects that I finished so that they would be done, but the experience was frustrating. The way I see it, I spend so much money and time on the quilt top, I want it to look good.I solved it by cutting a hole in a piece of plywood the size of my machine, then covering that plywood with a laminated fabric, creating a large smooth surface. I placed it on my sewing table with wooden blocks and a stack of old magazines to create an even surface. I also intend to buy one of those teflon mats made for free motion quilting, Supreme Slider.

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  3. Catching up now that I have my laptop back. My ragged hearts that I did a while back looked beautiful from the top (I did an all over stippling). I was so pleased with it. I turned it over to put the sleeve on and the backing had pleated right down the middle and on a bunch of the curves the top thread had pulled through big time and the bobbin thread was stretched tight. Verge of tears...yup! Did I rip it all out...nope! It will hang on a wall and I see anyone going to look at the back I will distract them or ask if they have a white glove! The best solution for days like these...creamy dill chips with a big bowl of sour cream! Just sayin'!

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