I was out half the night partying on Saturday and let me tell you, the body paid for it the next day. Talk about suffering! I had a headache, and my back was killing me, along with my forearms. This is what happens when you overdo as we all know, and no, I’m not looking for sympathy! We had a great time, so no regrets at all.

This is really all about machine quilting until the wee hours (when I haven’t been machine quilting at all for a while!), and having my body complain vociferously the next day. I have these wimpy forearms that don’t like too much repetitive motion or stress, and then I abused them badly. Not only that, I was sitting at a table that was too high so that didn’t help either. So the forearms are botched for a bit until they recover.

The other problem is the neck and back, which probably caused the headache too. See, the biggest issue is the machine itself. These machines are just not made for people like me, with a long upper body. I’ve looked for solutions before, but the tilt table idea didn’t work well for machine quilting with the Bernina. The Bernina has the same problem as the Pfaff: the machine head is so big that it obstructs the view of the needle and surrounding area when my chair and table are at the right height for machine quilting. I end up hunching down in the chair so that I can see the needle area better, which is no good for the back. This is what I see if I’m sitting up straight(er) in the chair when I machine quilt:

Heh, you see that? (See what?) Exactly. I can barely see the free motion foot, much less the needle, and anything behind it is a total loss. This is why I usually sit too low so I can see better, and hunch down as well, which places even more stress on my arms and back than machine quilting does to begin with. I finally got frustrated with the whole thing between the back pain and the arm pain and all, and removed the cover from the machine head to get all that white plastic out of my way:

Oh look! There’s the needle! And I can even see some of the space behind it! Okay, it’s still difficult because of all the parts in the way, but it really did help some to remove the plastic cover from the head of the machine. Maybe I won’t have to hunch down quite so far in the chair to see where I’m going with the quilt. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this and it’s not the perfect solution by any means, but it was better than the alternatives that ran through my head, which would have required more than a screwdriver and probably would have been more permanent. I will put the cover back on when I’m not quilting to keep the dust out (and also keep the cat from sticking his nose in there), and perhaps I’ll be in a little less pain. At the end of the day though, what I really want to know is when the heck are machine manufacturers going to get it together and build a better mousetrap machine?

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This is the view from my sewing chair today (or it will be as soon as I can get my computer work done!):

I’ve decided to try to just keep quilting on this quilt until it’s finally done, and maybe have it done in time for it’s 11th birthday, sometime in January! Yes, it’s a UFO that really is THAT old. I started this quilt in January, 1996, which I think (hope??) makes it the oldest UFO in my collection. It’s a queen size quilt from a pattern in McCalls Quilting magazine called Dresden Plate Drama and it is quite dramatic! I used my favorite fabric ever, a wonderful holiday print with roses in burgundies and pinks, green leaves, tiny purple-ish pine cones and metallic gold highlights. I bought a whopping 18 yards of that print, and used 13 yards for this quilt! I also bought 5 yards of the same print on a black background which is stunning as well.

So, why has this quilt been a UFO for so long? Well, it was a labor of love from the start, because every petal on each Dresden Plate had to be cut by hand with the same motif as all the rest of the petals for that plate to get the kaleidoscopic effect. Think Stack’n'Whack the old-fashioned way. Then of course, the Plates had to be hand appliquéd to the background. Even after I got the whole thing put together some years ago (not sure how many, but most likely pre-millennium) I thought I would hand quilt it, since it is such a fabulous quilt, and I really thought hand quilting was the only way to do it justice. I think I got one block quilted, and then it languished in my studio for another few years because hand quilting isn’t exactly my favorite thing to do.

At some point in the last couple of years, I decided that my machine quilting skills were certainly good enough to quilt this quilt the way it should be quilted, so I ripped out the little bit of hand quilting, and started to machine quilt. Other quilts got in the way of course, so it’s still here. I’ve no idea what I’ll do with it when I get it done, but I really need to get it done! And when it gets done, I’ll need to break out the champagne, and firmly restrain myself from putting crystals on it (though it would be pretty cool)!

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Here’s the view from my sewing chair today:

This quilt has been an interesting exercise in following the line, but not quilting on the line. Let me explain. See, I’m quilting right on the edge of all the appliqué pieces, so that means following the edge of the piece, but not quilting on the line that I’m following, which requires a bit of an adjustment. When you’re used to watching a marked line just ahead of the needle to machine quilt, it’s a bit weird to have to watch to the side a little to get the needle to go where you want. I think my quilting could be better quality-wise, but it gets better as I go. Of course, I’m just about done with the “on the edge” parts anyway now, and ready to start the background quilting, so hopefully I can have this done by October 1st. Always a deadline…

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