On days like this....

So last night I loaded a commission quilt on the beast and given my son and his girlfriend now sleep next to the room I have the beast in, I thought to myself that I'd get it quilted in the morning - so as not to disturb them, you understand - and then I can be a bit domesticated in the afternoon - maybe hoover up the dust wombats (they're waaaaaay past bunnies).

My client wanted an all over meander, avoiding the appliqued train - so, started quilting this morning and it's going really well....I'm meandering like a good thing and avoiding the applique...then I thought I could maybe quilt a line about 1/4" from the train to really make it pop......so started to do that and unfortunately my 1/4" line became anywhere between 1/8" - 1" from the train....oh oh, stop doing that, unpick.  Start meandering again.....

I finished a pass and noticed that the top thread was running really well, a bit too well really, and when I went to cut the threads, I put my hand underneath the quilt and it didn't feel right - felt a bit fuzzy - so eased off the tension on the quilt so I could take a good look underneath......and here's what I saw..

OMG -  the correct terms for this sort of happening is 'eyelashes' - and these eyelashes belong on the main characters in 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert', not on the back of my clients' quilt.  When I was unpicking my sort of 1/4" line, I must have inadvertently knocked the top thread out of the tension spring - aaaagh.

It was pretty easy to unpick, thank goodness, and it left a nice little pile of thread

Retensioned the top thread and off I went again - without incident this time...

gordon bennett i take a rotten photo!

here's the back - plain red and while it's not obvious, the thread i've used is variegated blues, through purple to red

 - but it totally put me off hoovering those wombats.  Instead, I gave the beast a thorough clean and oil, put in a new needle and loaded another quilt - this one is going in my Etsy shop.  Once this one's done, I have another commission quilting job, so looks like those wombats may become cows before I get to them.

Top and backing loaded and just waiting for me to attach the batting before I can pull the top up and start quilting.

I'll blog about this quilt once I've got it quilted.