Epic fail...

OK, maybe it's not epic, but it felt like it at the time, and kind of still does.

My go-to thread for piecing has always been Coats & Clark All-Purpose, bought by the fistful at Joann's and anywhere else I could find it. It's corespun, which means it has a polyester core covered in another material -- which I always assumed was cotton (or used to be when I first started buying it...anyone remember this? Or am I imagining things?). When I'm in The Zone, I can go through a spool in just a few days.

It's held up well to washing and ironing, and has never let me down...until this week.

I was about 80% finished with the quilting on one of my baby quilts this weekend, the quilt bunched on the table next to me, when I noticed one of the seams in the middle of the quilt looked a little funny. It was raised a little, like I hadn't ironed it all the way. And when I grabbed between my thumb and forefinger to take a closer look, this happened:

The seam gave way under my thumbnail like I was perforating it, the thread brittle, crackling as it broke. You can see the spiky little thread ends on the top part of the seams in the picture (which showed up best in black and white) -- they were like little staples when I pulled them out with tweezers.

Panicked, I started looking at more of the seams and found another (where the pin is, which is strange because these pieces were constructed separately and ended up next to each other pretty much randomly). Sick to my stomach and afraid to go any further, I secured the spots with pins and set it aside until I could look at it without crying. It's still sitting on my cutting table.

Near as I can figure, I melted the thread -- which, as it turns out, is polyester covered in polyester, not cotton, and therefore might not stand up to the cotton setting as well as it should. But I'm using the same iron I've used for months with this same brand of thread, and didn't do anything different in constructing this quilt than any other. Maybe I hit a bad couple stretches of thread that weren't completely covered? All I know is I have a quilt that I've put a lot of time into that now has the potential to fall apart at first washing unless I can think of a way to fix it without totally messing up the existing quilting.

I love a challenge, but now? Not good timing.

Has this happened to anyone else? Or am I a cautionary tale?

Another Paintstiks rescue...

Thanks for the many sympathy wishes for my aunt. Her funeral was small, mostly family -- just like she would have wanted. I gave the quilt to my cousin's wife, who will give it a good home in Aunt Ann's honor and cherish it in her memory.

In my rush to finish her quilt, I didn't take my usual week or so (or, in some cases, months) to play with the block arrangement. As a result, it had several value issues that I didn't really discover until the top was completely finished.

I got most of my lights and darks sorted just fine, but there were two in particular that read completely opposite once I got them in the mix, resulting in some muddy, confusing spots.

The original top, too muddy in places.

Rather than remove the offenders, though, I got out my Paintstiks.Where the navy floral was too dark, I stenciled over it in white...

...and where the dark was reading too light, I used blue to darken them up. But forgot to take pictures.

The results weren't perfect, but definitely improved some of the contrast.

Paintstiks to the rescue again!

The best laid plans...

I was cutting the binding on Sunday night when I got the call that my aunt had passed, much more quickly than expected. I'm sorry I didn't get the quilt to her in time, but that's OK -- it was a great therapeutic exercise for me, and I'll present it to my cousin's wife, who nursed her through her extended illness.

It really is a pretty quilt. But I didn't even notice it was asymmetrical until I hung it up to take this picture. Too close to it the whole time, I guess.

In a rush...

Thank you for the thoughtful comments about my aunt. I'm trying my darndest to get the quilt finished this weekend so I can ship it off on Monday.

So far, so good -- the top has met the approval of my inspector, so I'm on to basting!

If it ain't one thing, it's another...

I'm pretty sure in the grand scheme of things that an aunt in hospice trumps babies that aren't arriving for another two months. So we've had a change of schedule.

I'm not sure how long she'll be able to use it, or even if she'll be able to appreciate it, but once again my reaction to the news of sickness is to sew, so I'm making a quilt.

It's pretty much all I can do from far away.

Messin' me up...

What is wrong with this picture?

March in Chicago is supposed to be MISERABLE.

We are supposed to spend March battling 50mph winds, sleet stinging our faces, and wrestling inside-out umbrellas. We're supposed to be wearing two pair of long underwear to the St. Patrick's Day Parade. It's supposed to be rain one day, snow the next, with no expectations of seeing the sun until mid-April if we're lucky. It's supposed to be 30 days of a damp, cheerless existence, huddled under blankets on the sofa.

Instead, it's glorious. And HOT. My daffodils have been in bloom for a week, and the lilac is budding out. And I had some guy dressed like a leprechaun on Spring Break throwing up green beer on his flip-flops and my front lawn on Saturday afternoon (hey, I live in the city).

March is also the month when I start quilting all of those tops I've made since Christmas, and now? I have gardening to do. And bikes to ride, and runs to take along the lakefront. Because in spite of the reports that these milder temperatures are here to stay, I'm not totally convinced that there isn't a blizzard lurking somewhere in Canada, just waiting for us to let our guard down completely and dump a foot of snow on next week's deck party. As such, I'm treating each freakishly warm day as a gift from Mother Nature, abandoning my sewing machine and using every free moment to take advantage of Summer in March.

It's really messed my project schedule up, but I'm OK with it.

A few random things...

This hexagon top is going very slowly. So slowly, in fact, that I'm afraid it's going to become a UFO.

In an effort to mix it up a little, I pulled out my "Not So Plain Spoken" top and laid it out to measure for the backing. But I didn't make much progress there either, as you can see.

Interesting article for all of you who are into Pintrest. I'd include a quote from her original blog post, but that's copyright infringement, so you'll just have to go read it yourself.

I am still singing "Honeycomb" all day and night.

The web design class I'm taking just made the turn this weekend from "isn't HTML fun?" to "how the hell am I ever going to wrap my head around this?" Shades of junior year Programming 101, which I dropped at the last minute because -- wait for it -- I couldn't wrap my head around it.

I happened to be at Jacquie's the day her preview copy of "Quilting Modern" arrived. Gotta tell you, this book is gorgeous (and at 176 pages, surprisingly heavy!), filled with beautiful photographs and stunning quilts. It even smelled good in that new-book-fresh-ink kind of way.  I had it on pre-order even before I saw it in person, and I can hardly wait to get my copy!

Happy Monday, and happy quilting!