A stressful day

Yesterday was all together far too stressful a day. The day started well. I was planning on finishing my 'pin it' projects and then starting the quilting on  the 'Happy Anniversary' quilt. The 'pin it' projects were soon finished up leaving the post to write later (my day is tomorrow) and I was starting to feel rather pleased. A nice quiet day sewing before running the first Rainbow, Brownie and Guide meetings of the new school year. Nothing could go wrong. 

As I lifted my sewing machine onto the dining table the phone started to ring. The first phone call of many over the next hour. One of the new Rainbow mothers had told her friends that their daughters could join as well, they just needed to ring me. An hour later I had an additional 7 girls starting with us. Now 7 doesn't sound a lot but it is when the activities are all planned and all the craft items needed are assembled. I could have said no to the mothers but then seven 5 year old girls who had gone off to school looking forward to starting Rainbows would have been disappointed so I couldn't bring myself to do that. After all it was one of the mothers at fault not the girls. So I then spent some of my sewing time replanning and organising the programme.

At last I was able to get toback to my machine. I love my machine. It is an Elna Quilter's Dream 2 and I bought it several years ago now before I got back into quilting. It has a great range of embroidery stitches, stitches beautifully and has a knee lift. I took this picture from google as I realised I have never taken a photo of my machine

So there was my machine all ready to go having been completely de-fluffed and sporting a new quilting needle and next to it one quilt sandwich all ready for quilting. The machine worked perfectly while I filled up several bobbins with my Aurifil thread although it did sound a little noisy during the filling of the last one. Once the machine was threaded I got the quilt nicely supported on the dining table and on my lap and I was ready to go. Lovely a couple of hours of peace to get on with the quilting. The first minute went like a dream and then the machine whirled and whined and the needle snapped. I took the quilt out and put it to one side and having changed the needle got a small 'test sandwich' to check the problem was cleared. The machine clonked and clunked and the needle hit the rim of my open toe foot and snapped in two. So having checked that I had put everything on right and it wasn't anything I had done I packed up my machine and headed to the repair shop. The man at the shop didn't think it was anything too serious but he said the whole bobbin assembly was sitting wrong so maybe a screw had come loose with so much use. The good news I should have it back next Tuesday.

Back at home I realised my small sony camera needed re-charging so I could take photos of my pin cushions. My Nikon had to go for a repair and is now ready to come home (Yipee). I knew I had the charger for the camera when I got back from Switzerland but just couldn't remember where I had put it. So a search of the house began. At this point I was wondering what else could go wrong. Although I didn't find the charger yesterday I remembered where I'd put it this morning so I am going to do my photos and schedule my hop post later this afternoon. As for the rest of yesterday it was good but tiring. My daughter has lent me her sewing machine until I get mine back. I can't quilt on it but I can make the blocks I need to get done.

I'm going to go and do some hand sewing while I think about which blocks to make for the class I going to be teaching soon. I'll tell you about that in another post. I hope you day is going well.

Lyndsey