I stopped in at work yesterday to get some topstitch needles, which some folks recommend for free motion. I put in a 16 and started out on the Union piece. The first thing I noticed was that my machine ran quieter, which I'll take as a good thing. The second was that it was suddenly hard to do travel stitching with the larger needle. I don't think I can blame it on the needle, though, I think it was trying to get into the lines of the fine line piecing, which have more seam allowance on the back and are therefore bulkier.
About 3/4 of the way through the piece, I noticed that I was looking at the needle as I stitched, so I changed to looking at where I wanted to go. Somewhere along the line, I'd forgotten about that. The quilting lines became instantly smoother. I don't know how that works with curves, but it does. Same with riding a motorcycle, look where you want to go, not at where you are.
I got both 14 and 16 needles, so next time I'll try out the 14's. Oh, and I got a reminder about thread too. I picked up a spool of coats and clark from my stash, thinking it would be ok since it was tri-lobal polyester. Immediate shredding, so I got a new spool of Sulky too.
It snowed last night, changing from rain while Steph and the kids and I were eating at Applebee's (kids eat free on Tuesday evenings.) I took off as soon as I finished shoveling in the yummy shrimp. Traffic on the interstate was moving at about 40 mph and the snow was really coming down. It looked like Ohio had pretreated the roads, Kentucky had not. Definite difference. By the time I got home, it had pretty much stopped, with just a little overnight accumulation, not the anticipated 3 - 6". Schools are closed for the kids today, they did get the 3".
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