TODAY'S TIP

Well.....I decided the rusted/deconstructed top was complete....

 .....so......I hand basted a backing in preparation to machine stitch around the blocks and perhaps (yet again) try my hand at some simple machine quilting in the surrounding rusted 'burlappy' material.


Drat......the problems I had the last time I worked with rusted fabric totally slipped my mind.  What problems you may ask??  That was the inability of my sewing machine to stitch through the fabric...the needle either broke or the motor froze up.  I attributed it to insufficient rinsing of the rusted fibers from the muslin I had previously used.  


And actually, this time I was very attentive during that process.  But...the same thing happened.....which is pretty annoying.  I had to rip out the little bit of stitching I was able to sew and go to plan B.....(which is not known yet).

The other really annoying thing was that one of my beads cracked...probably due to the pressure foot hitting it.  


So.....rather than having to take out the basting to get at the backside of that area of beading.....  I used a trick that you may want to keep in mind.  Rather than having to remove a whole lot of beads, and tie off the thread at each end before replacing that area of beads.....I took my small needle nose pliers and pinched the bead so that it totally fell apart.  I carefully removed all the slivers of glass....you can see the thread that held the bead isn't harmed.  I'll simply bead another single bead over the top of that stitch and tie off under the bead, burying my threads between the layers and no one will every know I had an 'oops' moment!