From agilejack1.com

Yes, if I had a dog I would teach him to carry fabric on his head.  And then I would laugh and laugh and give him smelly bacon treats.

And then I would cut up those fabrics and put them in a quilt.  Four of the six fabrics on this pup’s head are the same as in the quilt below.  I used lots of wild florals for snowball blocks, as you can see.

My design screen came in very handy.

And today, after a couple of thousand hours of machine quilting (yes, I’m exaggerating, but lots of things went wrong in the process and it felt like I’d spent a long month in front of the machine), it is ready for hand-stitching.

My fancy, complicated, expensive sewing machine is a joy in so many ways, but when it comes to free motion quilting the thing balks and acts like it never saw thread before in its life.

There are good days and bad days.

I am not inexperienced when it comes to free motion quilting.  I’ve taken classes.  I took a four-hour class from Karen McTavish, for God’s sake!  And I aced it.  But my machine and I have a long way to go before we can “McTavish” together.

She is so cool she even has quilting feather tattoos.

Here’s an example of her quilting:

I like to swirl, too.  My machine is not a fan of swirling, though.  And I can’t figure out why not.

So…while we are quarantining this week I am determined to spend some time solving this problem.  I need new glasses, so the stitching won’t be as small as I’d like, but there must be a way to glide and swirl and create lovely patterns again.

If that doesn’t work, I’ll balance fabric on my head and drink tequila.