Coming up to the end of the first long side of quilting, doesn’t the top thread come unthreaded and so… stop… undo the nest of thread, back up and anchor the ends, rethread…
Start again and take the first couple stitches with the pressure foot up… think, will it matter as I go on a few more. Of course. Stop,.. undo… anchor…
start again…
Not that much left on this bobbin so I guess I’ll keep going until it’s empty.
Colson Whitehead’s Rules for Writing – NYTimes.com.
Parts of this really made me laugh, especially Rule 8.
Woke up this morning to the sound of luscious, wonderful, soft grey, life-imbuing rain. I thought, how wonderful a way to start a couple days off. Sort of like rain days during vacation where part of your brain thinks secretly ‘oh good, a break from the too-bright, just-right summer weather. An excuse to nap, go to town, chill a bit, regroup, do whatever comes up. See a movie, stay inside and recover from the sun.’
So now, being caffeinated and refreshed and caught up on the world news I am sitting down to quilt. It’s going well, a bit at a time and I guess I’ll listen to a bit of the Martian Chronicles. I have my course essay in my head so maybe I’ll write that out later. Need to plow through the two Alice books. It’s been a few weird haiku-less days and I need to fix that.
But for now some thread and creating a long, continuous line.
It’s amazing what taking your own good advice can do for you. You know the stuff. It’s up there with eat your vegetables and get enough sleep and be nice to people. In this setting it’s stuff like have enough light on your work area. Stay hydrated. Take lots of breaks (not so many that it is more like not doing enough work). Have your bobbins full and ready to go. Have enough thread.
And tonight, it means – support your work! That might mean putting a little table to your left to support the weight of your quilt. That helps you the quilter move it around more easily and well that’s always a good thing. I’m just using a little snack table. Just big enough to help out but not enough to be in the way.
What are you doing to make your work easier?
In order to arrive at a personal style you have to have a technique to begin with. In other words, when I say that style is a special case of technique… you have to have the technique. You have to have the place to make the choices from. If you don’t have a basis on which to make the choice, you don’t have a style at all; you have a series of accidents.
