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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Ripping out stitches



I started a quilt a couple days ago that I knew would be a little more work.  It was custom work and I decided to use 3 different colors of thread on the quilt.  When I rolled up to the bottom of the lone star, I put in two feather wreaths in each corner.  Then to my horror I realized I had forgotten to change threads.  All the wreaths on the top and sides of the quilts were done in a light variegated purple/pink thread and the bottom two wreaths were in a dark variegated purple thread.  I couldn't believe what a stupid mistake I had just made.  I wanted to throw a fit, kick something, yell, etc.  Not that it would do any good, there was nothing to do but to pick all those stitches out.  It took 5 hours to get them out!!!!  I was up at 5:00 a.m. the next day, cleaning up the area of any little thread bits and then restitching the design in the right color.  It was a lesson to be learned -- you can still make stupid mistakes even after 11 years of the machine quilting business.  And when you make those kind of mistakes, there's nothing to do but own up to it and spend the time (even if it takes 5 hours) fixing it.  I'm just glad it could be fixed.  I'm posting a picture of the ripping out of the stitches as well as the finished quilt.  Thankfully the quilt turned out very nice.

1 comment:

The Quilted Finish said...

How completely and utterly beastly! Unpicking stitches when machine quilting must be one of the most frustrating tasks ever known, you have my sincere sympathy. A quilt I just took off my frame (I'm a newly opened for trade quilter)seemed to be one of those quilts that was fraught with trouble, I spent only about an hour unpicking after numerous thread breakages and that was enough!! Poor you, fingers crossed that was your "doozy" for ripping this year. Cheers.
PS Your quilting is beautiful.