Speed Bumps and Brick Walls

So, you know how, come Friday at 5 o'clock, you have all these great plans for the weekend?  For me, they usually are in the form of a nice, long to-do list, and I have dreams of happily checking off everything on that darn list.

Well.  Life has a great way of saying to you, HA! Not so fast....  I can't really complain that much - I actually got quite a lot accomplished.  I took the car in for servicing, which was only very slightly overdue.  I paid bills and did my books.  The hubs and I went berserk on the front yard, and chopped, chopped, chopped, and had 7 (!) contractor sized bags of trimmings to show for it, which I dutifully hauled to the city dump.

I also helped my brother re-do the couch cushions, which had started to poke him in the butt with feathers.  I had no idea that there even WERE feathers in the couch cushions when I originally bought it 10 years ago, before passing it on to him 6 years ago.  When we opened up the zipper on the cushion cover, this is what we saw:

HOLY COW!!  We replaced the feather pad that surrounded the foam cushion with a memory foam layer, and now he's back in business.  (But I'm sure I'll be finding feathers in all kinds of weird places for days to come...)

I also made major headway on a new quilty project!  This is where I hit the speedbumps, and ultimately a brick wall, though...

Saturday night, I got the entire top pieced!  I'm hoping to put together a tutorial for this one soon, but here's how the top turned out:

Kind of tough to see, because it's got a white background, and it's on my white design wall, but you get the idea.  I have to say, I'm super happy with the design itself!  I even managed to get my center points to line up soooo nicely!

My first speed bump came in pressing out the blocks that used the white background fabric.  I realized, too late, that I'd used some subpar fabric - lord only knows where or when I bought it.  But this stuff, it's just awful!!  When I press it, it shrinks and distorts, and that's just with a dry iron!

I also did the math wrong when I figured out what size this would come out as, so it's too big to be the baby quilt that I envisioned it would be.  That also threw off my plans for the backing, which I thought I'd just piece together from the leftover layer cake pieces.  UGH.  If I had any hope of finishing in time to make the Project Quilting deadline, I'd have to use the big, honkin' piece of minky that hadn't really been assigned a project yet.

With all of those issues, I thought that I'd just make the best of it.  This would be a great time to try out a new FMQ pattern that I've been wanting to try out - loopy, big-petaled flowers.  I started sewing away on Sunday morning, but had yet another issue to deal with.  Saturday night, in the last 4 inches of the very last seam I had to sew to complete the top, the bobbin decided it wasn't happy.  It jumped from where it's supposed to sit in my machine:

To a very unusual place:

I cleaned out the whole machine, got the bobbin back in its place, and refilled it to try to get it in a little bit of a happier place.  But, alas, as I tried to do my FMQ, there's this little clicking sound going on, and my thread keeps breaking.  So.  No quilt finish to share, and I didn't get it done for the PQ deadline.  Brick wall.

I'm going to give it another thorough cleaning, and see if I can't figure out what that clicking is.  However, if that doesn't work, it's time for the machine to head to the shop. Booooo!  Keep your fingers crossed that I can exorcise whatever demon is in there!