A bit absent

Last week I was away teaching for four full days - for my day job, not quilting. Teaching is something I love to do but oh my it is hard work and so tiring - those of you who teach for a living have my neverending respect. So no blogging. And then on the weekend, I just wanted to use my free time to sew and quilt. Now, I did not mean this blogging absence to grow to be a whole week, oops. Sometimes I've just used up all my words.

Then last night,  I managed to suck a piece of batting into the bobbin case on my long arm. Not a good idea. So then I spent a few hours figuring out how to get it off the machine. That picture above is after I cut the batting away.

After I was convinced that there was no way I could get all those fibres out or that the black part would ever spin again, I wrestled it out of the machine. Today, I went to see Matt Sparrow, who together with the rest of the gang at Sparrow Studioz, have a solution to every one of my long arm problems. I have that pretty new bobbin case to install now. And Matt insisted on keeping the broken one, he is going to work at it until it is fixed, I just know it. If you are ever looking for a long arm machine in Canada, Matt is your guy, I really cannot think of a better person to rely on when owning this industrial machine.

Oh, why, you ask, did I have a piece of batting near the spinning bobbin case such that it could get sucked in and break the needle and generally do very bad things. Well, you need to oil that case after every two bobbins, especially if you like cotton thread as I do. When you have  large quilt on a smaller frame, you don't want to spray oil on the quilt - oiling involves letting the needle run up and down without thread for 2 minutes or so. And if you are stupid, you hold a bit of batting in front less than securely. I need a better solution for the future, as this was not pretty.

I know I've been away, but if you were at the American Quilter Society show in Albuquerque last week, you might have seen a photo of my quilt Sunset (I had no actual quilts entered in the show). Latifah shared that photo of her Show Book on instagram. I am so thrilled at all the places that Sunset has shown up in the AQS advertising, but this one might be the most fantastic of all. And my name is on it over on the binding side, they have been so fantastic about giving credit. Everyone at the show got a copy. I might even have to show you this again, once a copy of the book arrives here at my house.

I'll be back in the morning to share the Scraptastic Tuesday January link up winners (you still have 2 hours to enter, until 10 pm MST) and after that I hope that things will be back to normal around here again.

I'm off now to see if I can put my machine back together, there is a great video here showing how to do it. Or I might just have to make some scrappy blocks, we shall see.

Best,

Leanne