The Troublemaker

Am I the only quilter who checks MSQ’s Daily Deal and FQS’s 24 Hour Flash Sale every single day? (Twice on Tuesday for FQS!) Many face masks and this small quilt were made with Parrot Bali Crackers. The set was on sale for $16 four years ago, and it was such a great price that I asked my husband and my daughter to each buy a set for me. I thought that I might make a king size quilt out of it, but the colors are too dark for my bedroom, so I put it in a plastic storage bin. (I have several storage bins filled with precut fabric. Those daily sales are so tempting!) I performed routine maintenance on my machine after I completed “The Boring Bear” quilt, which included oiling the hook. Unfortunately, I forgot to remove the thread from the needle before I hit the power button, and that mishap resulted in a tangled mess of thread in the bobbin assembly, which I gently removed. This was my first free motion quilting project with my new longarm machine, and it also was my first quilt using batik fabric. I had trouble with skipped stitches and shredded thread. I tried all sorts of things to fix the problem, and I even began to wonder if batik has Ginsu knives woven into the fibers. I found a video on YouTube which said that misting batik with water would help with skipped stitches. This helped, but it did not solve the problem entirely. I tried my luck at quilting feathers with mediocre results, and I practiced using rulers. I used dark green fabric for the backing, and it looks terrible because of the problems that I encountered. I found a picture of the quilt on Pinterest, but I couldn’t find the pattern, so I created it myself. I later discovered that it’s called “Grandma’s Victory”. I liked the design so much that I made another quilt with it, which I will post separately. It is quick to make and has very little wasted fabric. I will give the quilt to my son’s dog.