There are times when stitching in the ditch is the best way to quilt a project.

You are happily quilting along, and then…….

….your stitching jumps right out of that ditch, and suddenly an ugly line of stitches shows.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

I pull out a Fabrico marker….

….and color in those offending stitches…..

AHHHH….much better…..

And yes, I did get a slight smear of red onto the white fabric, but that shows less than the white stitches did!!

How do you handle this situation??

I almost always wear quilting gloves when I am doing free-motion quilting and find them VERY helpful.

However, when I clip threads and try to dispose of them, they often stick to the glove, leaving me shaking my hand trying to dislodge them, while trying NOT to sling them all over the room!

Then I had an idea…..

What if I took an unused plastic box and wound masking tape around it with the sticky side out…..

….so that it looks like this…..

Now, when I have threads stuck to my glove, I can simply touch them to the masking tape and…..

…..OFF THEY COME!!

When I filled both sides with threads, I cut off the tape…..

…and tossed it in the trash!!

OH MY….this was SO helpful!!

BUT, then I got to thinking even harder…..

…. and wondered if a simple lint roller wouldn’t accomplish the same thing!!

And, IT WORKED.

Once the roller was full of threads…..

…. I simply tore off the sticky sheet…..

…and it was ready to go again!!

The lint roller doesn’t hold as many threads before it loses stickiness, but it is certainly easier.

Will you try either of these?

As I quilted the flowers on the graduation quilt for Claire, I LOVED how they looked…

….giving JUST the right amount of color in the center of each white block.

THEN I HUNG IT ON MY DESIGN WALL AND STEPPED BACK FROM IT…..

From a distance, the flowers disappeared, and the yellow centers looked like blobs of color. It looked BLAH!

I went from YEA to UH-OH!!

That night was my quilt guild meeting, so I took the quilt to show-and-tell and asked their advice.

One suggested quilting another line or two on the outside of each flower to give it a bit more definition, and I honestly thought that was what I would do.

But then, two or three others said this….. “She is going to be using it up close, and THAT is what matters. Not what it looks like from afar!!”

Their words were the perfect reminder to me that this quilt was made to be used….not to hang as a decoration.

This interaction also reinforced how important our creative friends are to our craft.

I leave you with this thought….

Sometimes the quilt doesn’t need fixing. Sometimes the quilter just needs encouragement!

So, go forth….and be encouraged!!