a Work-in-Progress

Today has been one of those days, friends. Somehow I spent my morning facilitating a duck bath (suddenly, we have ducks!), planting tomatoes (errrg, gardening) and cooking lasagna with my girl. All good things, yes, and I was none the worse for it until my sewing session during rest time turned out to be such a disappointment.

So much for a wordless Wednesday. I think it's all coming out!

This is something I've been working at off and on since early April. 

embroidery pattern from The New Crewel

Embroidery pattern from The New Crewel

a work-in-progress

The embroidery is done just in time to become a gift for my mother-in-law this Mother's Day.  And just to be clear, my mother-in-law is an angel, so it's the least I can do!  After a bit of back and forth, she asked for a serger cover. I bought some Central Park with her in mind months ago.  She likes everything soft, gentle, delicate, pretty.  I think she'll love this embroidery, but the rest of the project...

I'll show you the outside of the cover another time.  Today during my kids' "rest time" I worked on creating the lining for the serger cover.  I knew it would be this simple celery green solid quilted with batting to give the cover body.  And, you know, you hardly ever see the inside of a sewing machine cover so wouldn't this be a good time to practice my free motion quilting?

Right.

woe is me!

I've always loved the look of pebble quilting.  If you're not familiar with it, please ignore my shoddy work.  You can see some real pebble quilting here

I fought with constant puckering from the bobbin thread, despite my many (MANY) attempts at adjusting tension. This caused raised, bumpy pebbles.  Not good!  And then there were the times that the bobbin thread just snapped. Again and again. I stopped to take a picture when this happened:

and the safety pin too...

Really, the safety pin too!?!?

I finished working the pebble quilting across this short side of the fabric and then did some wave quilting along the length of the liner to finish it off. And after that particular experience, I wonder when I'll ever attempt free motion again. Definitely felt like chucking the whole thing. Or, crying.

Don't worry, I will try it again. I'm looking forward to taking a freemotion quilting class at The Sewing Summit, and I also think that my sewing machine may have it's limits.  Ok, and obviously I need lots more practice!

I've decided I'll just have to cut off the pebble portion and replace it with a new wave-quilted section. Good thing it's only a lining.

Oh well, at least I tried.