Fiddling with Lost My Marbles

Yep. I'm going to call it "Lost My Marbles". I can't think of a better name for the effort that's going into this quilt.

I spent some time Tuesday starting the quilting and as you can see my thread choice was a very bad one. It matches beautifully! It will show great in the dark blocks but the light side of the quilt will look unquilted.

So back to my obscene thread collection to find something else. I have lots of choices! These are the first 3 that I pulled. I love these colors The 2 on the right are acrylic threads from the collection of threads that I bought from Lunn Fabrics years ago when they were closing out these threads. I used some of these threads in Parasol.

Do you see how the thread on this one is really loose?  Have you ever had that happen?

This is how much thread I had to let fall off the cone before I could get it down to something relatively neat and controllable. I don't think it's a problem with the thread, I think it's because I had the cone upside down in the drawer. I haven't paid a lot of attention to how I stored these threads but now that I've gone through the drawer I see that almost half of them were upside down. I've fixed that now.

It's a really pretty pile of thread though!

But after all that I didn't choose any of these 3 threads. I decided on a bright orange that shows even better than in this photo. It's going to even stand out more in the darkest and lightest blocks.

But then I ran into another snag. My ruler foot wobbles left and right a little bit. It has to do with  how tightly the foot can be screwed on and still hop up and down. Michele, from Virginia Longarm, is bringing me a new washer that Innova developed to fix this. 

I thought you might want to know how I'm marking my circles. 
Right after I made this quilt I saw Sue Heinz at  Birds of a Feather and she had these tools. I knew they were exactly what I needed! I can easily divide circles into and multiple of  thirds, fourths and fifths.

So once I get the new washer for the ruler foot I'll be ready to go. I'm going to document every circle that I stitch and will share the rulers that I use for each one as well. But I have to wait until next Saturday to get the washer. I'm going to try to use all of the time between now and then to get everything ready for my classes and booth at Birds of a Feather on February 8 - 11.  During my break times I'll work on some postcards and maybe plan a new quilt.