Today will be a day spent cleaning up the studio, organizing my thoughts and projects while preparing for a quilt program that I am giving tomorrow at the Prime Timers Group at our church. This is a group that meets at the church every Tuesday during the fall, winter and spring for a program and lunch. You only have to be 55 or over to attend. (I was able to attend last year even though I haven't quite reached 55 because I was the program coordinator.) This is a wonderful group of folks and I do miss them but I just couldn't commit to this with everything else going on in my life right now. So they did ask if I would put together a program of my quilts, what I do, a little of how I do it and why I do it. It should be fun so today I have to go through the house and gather up my quilts, wallhangings and what nots and organize a program. I know pretty much what I want to say but I just have to get it all together in a cohesive program. That's the agenda for today.
Now for what I did over the weekend. Not too much to show for except you can tell I have been working by this photo.
This is lint in my bobbin case. I should have cleaned it out several weeks ago but I just kept putting it off. Usually I will notice a change in stitch quality when lint builds up like this but I wasn't having any tension issues so I kept on quilting. I have learned a new trick for cleaning out this lint build up. Use a pipe cleaner. I have heard that you should not to use the canned air as the moisture can cause problems, although I know that is what my machine service people use. I also use an old 1" paint brush and that works great for the top surface lint. The trick to the pipe cleaner is to fold it in half and insert it into the little nooks and crannies and when you pull it out the lint is clinging to it. Just be careful that you don't get it stuck if you have little springs and what nots down in the bobbin case area. Having a pair of tweezers that can reach in to areas where big clumps are just out of fingers reach or stray threads are hiding is also very handy. Those are the very intricate tools of the trade for the primary maintenance that you should do. How frequently you do that depends on how much you use your machine. I should probably do that at least every 2 weeks the way I use my machine, others may only have to do this 2 times a year.
Here is one more photo of my weekend project.
This is my homework assignment for the Dyeing to Design online class I am taking. It is about working with value only to create a composition. I could have done some things differently to create a stronger composition but as I was working things kept morphing a bit out of my control. It is finished except for the binding and I learned a lot about value so that was the most important thing about the lesson. The quilting, I found, was a more important element when working with just value as nothing else distracts the eye. Now I will have to find some time this week to work on lesson 2. It is to create a quilt by using color to create a mood. I think that this will be challenging.
Well, on to the tasks at hand for today. I hope you have a wonderful day and remember to clean up those little messes before they bog you down and cause tension issues.
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