A Spatial Perception Win

The husband comments occasionally on how odd it is that someone as spatially challenged as I am would choose a hobby that relies so heavily on spatial perception skills. I think it’s important to challenge ourselves. Besides, it provides a great deal of entertainment. I laugh at myself a lot. I also believe the brain is trainable, and my spatial perception abilities are far better than they were 25 years ago when I could not spatially percept my way out of a paper bag. I said to the husband that when I do figure something out, it’s a powerful chemical hit in my brain.

Case in point: A couple of days ago, while surfing the internet, a picture of a vintage quilt popped up on my screen. It contained a block I had never seen before. I copied the picture into Preview and stared at it for a while, attempting to figure out how the block was assembled. I stared and stared. I could get one part of the block put together but not the other. I gave up and went and did something else for a bit.

When I came back and looked at the picture again, still exasperated with myself, I happened to tilt my head to the side and boom!—there it was. The block construction is odd, but as soon as I saw how it was put together, I was able to reverse engineer it. (A Google image search brought up nothing similar.) The block fits the definition of “quirky,” to be sure. I spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon making sample blocks to test my theory. It works, so this will be my next design. I just have to figure out what fabrics I want to use.

And as of yesterday afternoon, I have hired a tech editor. I feel like I am in over my head and need a professional to look over my patterns. I offered first right of refusal to JC, who tech edited all my knitting patterns, but she isn’t as familiar with quilt patterns and declined. Googling “quilt pattern editors” brought up two results, so I chose one and sent off an inquiry e-mail. She responded affirmatively, and after some back and forth discussion about scheduling, we agreed that I would send off Noon and Night and Cobbles some time in the next two weeks. (I was actually glad to have the extra week of breathing room to write up Cobbles and get them both done even though it means delaying Noon and Night.)

I expect that this week will involve more time at the computer than the sewing machine, but that will be a good excuse to get the taxes and other paperwork done, too.

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I ordered a second bobbin case for the Q20. I would like to try using 40wt thread in both the top and bottom, and having a second bobbin case will allow me to set up the second one with the proper tension and leave it instead of monkeying with the bobbin tension adjustment every time I want to change thread weights.

The Q20 came with something I had never seen before, although I was aware that this tool existed:

This is a bobbin case tension gauge. You put a loaded bobbin case into the cam, run the thread through the tension disks, and measure the tension. For the Q20, Bernina recommends a tension of 220. They also recommend testing the tension every time you change bobbin thread. The tension will differ between brands even when the weight is the same. Aurifil 50wt and Mettler 50wt require different bobbin tension settings, which is why most people stick with the same combination of threads for all their quilts.

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Ali and her little guy came over yesterday afternoon. We ate dinner and then left the little guy and the husband in the living room to watch heavy equipment failure videos while she and I went upstairs to sew. Ali had brought her serger with her, so I set it up and I showed her how to thread it. She nailed it on the first try.

[We heard all sorts of discussion happening downstairs, and when we checked on the guys, we discovered that the little guy (he’s 5) had climbed up into the recliner with the husband and the two of them were very seriously discussing what was going on in the videos. This kid has been watching heavy equipment failure videos with the husband literally since he was nine months old. I was babysitting him one time and left him with the husband for a bit to go take care of something, and when I came back, the two of them were sitting in the recliner together staring at the television.]

Ali wants to make fleece tops. She brought some fleece scraps with her, so we fine-tuned the serger settings to make the perfect seam. All she has to do is take the serger home and set it up and she’ll be ready to go.