Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

Taming slippery threads

I love using all different kinds of threads and, when making postcards or quilting I especially love shiny specialty threads.

I have lots of cones of these acrylic threads. They are great in my serger to edge postcards but the thread is so slippery that it is always pooling under the cone. Inevitably the thread gets caught there and breaks or totally messes up the tension.

A lot of people like to use thread nets on thread like this but I have never had good luck with thread nets. In my experience they really mess with the tension. A long time ago someone shared a better method of dealing with these cones and I wanted to share it with you.

A bowl of rice! I keep this little plastic container of rice near my serger and simply set the come into the rice. The thread still falls but it can't get caught under the cone and it feeds to the machine perfectly. How simple (and cheap) is that?

Here's my serger set up with 2 bowls of rice and 2 cones of thread. When not in use I put the lids on the containers. The rice doesn't go bad. I've had one of those containers in here at least 10 years.

Google Tools

This post is very off-topic for me but I wanted to share a free online class that I recently took that was so valuable that I would have paid money for it.

I admit, I love Google in a big way. I love Google mail that often catches when I enter the wrong address. I love Google Analytics for helping me analyze traffic to my blog and shop, I love Google Reader for keeping my 500+ blogs in order and I practically live in Google Search.

A couple of months ago I found out about an online class for using Google Analytics. It was a 1-hour web conference and I learned several new things that I could do with the Analytics tool to help me manage my sites.

A few weeks ago I received an email offering a class called Power Searching with Google. It was a 2 week course of 3 classes each week (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday). This week I finished up the last class and it was one of the most valuable classes that I've ever taken. It was amazing how much I did not know about using Google Search. One lesson dealt with Google Search Features. Now maybe I am the last person to know that you can find out the flight status of any flight by putting the airline and flight number into the Google search box or that the Google search box is also a calculator. But if there's anything on that page that you did not know I would highly recommend the Power Searching With Google class. I don't know when the next session will be offered but if you follow the Google Blog you will find out that and lots of new features that Google is continually implementing. I added the Google Blog to my Reader so that I automatically get notices.

Of course I am not affiliated with Google, I just like their products and no one can touch their search capabilities. Power Searching with Google will make you smarter and faster on the Web.

 

Measuring Up

Have you ever checked your various measuring implements to see if they are all the same? If you haven't I can tell you that the most likely aren't. Let me show you.

I took 2 of my acrylic rulers and 2 tape measures and lined them up exactly on the 1" mark of my cutting table.

Now, look at where the 23" mark falls. The bottom ruler matches the table. The top ruler is just a hair shorter than the table and the 2 tape measures are markedly shorter than the table mark. Just imagine the difference at 60 or 80 inches when measuring a border!

So what do you do? Don't throw everything out. Just be sure to consistently use the same tool. For example, I never use my cutting mat for measuring anything. Ever. I use my Omnigrid rulers for cutting because I know they are consistent across the rulers. When I am doing borders I use my longest tape measure to measure both the quilt and the border fabric. By using the same tool I know I am getting the right fit. It doesn't matter if what I measure reads 64" or 64 1/2", all that matters is that I use the same tool to measure both pieces so that the length is right.

So before you blame your 1/4" foot for your measuring problem, check your measuring tools first.