What do you do when your sewing machine is being repaired?

I was in the middle of free motion quilting a quilt for my younger daughter when the whole thing went wonky. I knew that it was a tension problem. I even knew that the tension problem is with my top thread. Usually when I see this problem, the way to fix it is to rethread the machine, making sure that the pressure foot is up, so that the tension disks are not engaged.

Unfortunately, none of that worked, so into the repair shop went my machine. Instead of letting it keep me down, I thought I’d take the opportunity to try piecing a quilt by hand.

I had bought the Craftys 2015 block of the month quilt kit a couple of months ago. Besides being an incredibly beautiful quilt, the directions for the quilt include both templates and hand piecing. I had never done any hand piecing before, and I thought it would be fun to go retro in my quilt making. So far it’s been fun.

It does take longer than machine piecing, but not nearly as much longer as I thought it would be. It’s also quite relaxing putting all the little pieces together. The one thing that I really love about it is that I have the ability to take it with me wherever I go. That means that I can take it when I babysit for my gorgeous grandson, which I do every Monday.

So far, I’m very pleased with the results. Once I get my machine back. I’ll work on a couple of quilts at a time – a machine one and a hand one. I enjoy both techniques and it will be fun to keep my feet in both a more modern and old fashion quilt world.