My Quilting History

Friday, July 9, 2010

Full Bobbins

I have very few bobbins for my sewing machine. 5 to be exact. I did buy a pack of 20 a while ago, but they don't fit my machine. The package said they were for Bernina machines, but I should have read the print on the back that said what specific machines they were for before I bought them.
    I don't really enjoy un-threading my bobbins in order to put a new thread color on them, but I have done it many times as the need arose.  The other day I needed to a turquoise thread in my bobbin in order to quilt a client's quilt.  Unfortunately, all five of my bobbins were full, and not one had turquoise thread in it.  I was definitely not in the mood to change the thread out. So instead, I put my client's quilt aside for the time being and inserted my bobbin full of white thread into my machine and pulled out some of my UFO's.
     My plan was to finish up some peicing until I ran out of white bobbin thread. Then I would have a free bobbin to load my turquoise thread. Since I felt the need to start machine quilting my clients quilt right away, I was motivate to quickly get some of my own piecing done. The first UFO I started on was my two tone purple quilt. I started this one about 8 months ago but then put it aside when I mis-cut all my large purple squares by half an inch. I must say that is how I get most of my UFO's. I screw up during part of the piecing process and then, in my frustration, I put the project down for awhile, sometimes a long while.  But this day I re-cut my purple fabric and finished sewing together the last outer squares to complete this top.

I still had some while bobbin thread though, so I pulled out another project I have been working on for even longer, at least 7 years or more. For this project I was taking scraps of fabrics I had been using for other projects and turning them into 4 patches. I decided a while ago, though, to not make any more patches, I have almost 200, and instead started the process of adding a yellow border on all of them.  I got a few more borders complete, but not all of them since the bobbin finally ran out.

Which is prob a good thing because I am short 1.5 yards of yellow fabric.  I thought, no prob I'll just go to Wal-Mart and get more because all the years I have lived in this town, (12.5 years) my Wal-Mart has carried this same bolt of yellow fabric.  But to my dismay, when I went in, they didn't have any.  They didn't even have a slot on the shelf for it.  I was shocked.  What am I to do?!?  Sure I could border half the four patches with blue.  That would make a wonderful blue and yellow mixed border 4 patch quilt, but that would mean I would have to rip off over 200 three inch side borders.  Not something I am looking forward too.  I have decided to go back to the Wal-Mart when the fabric department manager is working and ask if she can order this particular bolt of fabric for me one more time.

3 comments:

  1. WOW you are really busy sewing and quilting... don't you hate that when you buy new bobbins and they just are the ones you need... I really think all machines should come with 10 to 20 bobbins hahaha xxxxxxxxxxxx

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love your work Leah!

    You sound like me.....I have only a few bobins (4 recently went into a grandson's science project) and I would quilt till I used up a bobbin rather than throw away the thread.

    ReplyDelete