Sewing machine 2 - Deni 0.  Not the best day for sewing, I'm afraid.  I was hoping that since I had a day off, I would get a couple of projects done.  It started out well - Alli got off to school a little after 7:00, I started a load of laundry, played a few games on the computer, and then settled down to finish up the quilt for Steve (the weeding is the 29th - I think I'm in trouble!)

Things were going well, but I was having issues trying to move the quilt around on my smallish machine.  After a few tussles with it, I noticed that there seemed to be something wrong with my stitches.  All of a sudden, my stitches looked .... odd.  I had moved one of the controls on the machine to a slight zigzag.  Time to rip out.  Bummer.  Not long after that, my thread started breaking.  Every few inches.  For no reason I could see.  My tension looked good, the machine was threaded correctly.  I was out of ideas and patience.
 
Thank goodness for Google.  The first site that popped up said to check to make sure the machine was threaded correctly (it was - I had re-threaded it like 30 times already!) and then next to check the needle.  I pulled my needle out, and it was slightly bent (probably from me tugging all that material around).  Eureka!!!  I changed the needle, and sat back down to sew.  For about 6 inches, and then the thread broke again.  ARGHHHH!

My next thought was that it was because of the thickness of all the material, so I decided to test it out on the regular quilt blocks I had to work on.  It seemed to work just fine for the blocks......until I had the block competed, and realized that it was the wrong size.  Finally, the light bulb lit up.  Not only had I hit the zigzag button while moving all the material around, I had moved the needle from center to the left, so my seam was off by an eighth of an inch - which made my block about a half inch too small over all, and....I'm thinking that the extra strain from the different angle was causing the thread to break too.  I reset all the controls on the machine, and.....so far, no breaks!  Of course, I also quit right about then too - before I could throw the machine out the window.  I went in to town and did the grocery shopping, and finished up all the other 'weekend chores'.  Maybe I'll be able to finish the quilt yet!

I stopped at the quilt shop and picked up the blocks for the next month (and I haven't finished last months yet~) and they had the (almost) finished quilt up. It still needs one more border row put on, but this is what the finished quilt will look like.