She Likes Quilts: T Words

You know how some words evoke a specific emotion? All you have to do is hear them and they trigger a very real...often powerful...feeling from the past. Or maybe the present.

I honestly don't know how other long arm quilters feel about the word I'm about to share with you, but I can tell you it brings out the very worst in me.

Tension.

I'm not talking about the tension you feel when another driver cuts you off, or your boss calls you into his office. The meaning I'm referring to causes me to freak out, pace, obsess, write frantic emails, make frantic phone calls, lose sleep and sweat.

(I may be exaggerating a little. Or not...)

I'm talking about thread tension.

The quest for the perfect stitch. It's never ending.

My machine was skipping stitches and driving me nuts. I did everything I could think of to fix the tension...everything. EVERYTHING. Finally, my good friend Cindy came over to help me down from the wall I'd been climbing.

Guess what? It wasn't tension at all. My timing was off.

There we were, one experienced long arm quilter and one incredibly green one. I read the instruction book while she did surgery on the mechanics of my machine.

She's my hero. And I learned there are two T words that can make me crazy. And that it's really hard to fix the tension when there's nothing wrong with it.

I know what caused the problem and I'm here to tell you I won't be doing it again.

I've been quilting a lot, but not taking a lot of pictures. Sorry, my bad. I do have one, though...