If you are wanting to complete a quilting project, you will most likely want to machine quilt it. Will you do it yourself, or will you have a professional machine quilter do it for you? Most of the time we want to machine quilt for ourselves, yet afraid we might fail. After all we have invested lots of time and money into our quilt tops and we are anxious to give it as a gift or proudly display it in our home or office. Certainly we don't want to wait any longer, it took us some time to get the quilt blocks assembled, the sashing and borders sewn on. And, of course, we want our quilting pattern choices to make our new quilt top just sing.

     Here is some advice I gave two traditional sit-down machine quilters who were my Studio wanting to take machine quilting classes so they could complete some of their smaller projects. One of them lamented that she just did not feel she could do a good job without lots of practice and taking even more classes...here are my suggestions:

     Have you ever worried that the quilt top that you are about to machine quilt on a shortarm, midarm or longarm quilting machine may not finish squarely? Not as a result of imperfect piecing, but as a result of the top and bottom leaders on your quilting machine rollers stretching or bowing out in the middle over time. This will always create a curve in the finished quilt after it is machine quilted because the distortion is quilted right into the finished quilt top.

     So let’s find out. Do your top and bottom leaders bow out in the center? Are your leaders starting to stretch in the center where all the pressure is exerted since we pin from the center out and rarely pin the entire length of the leaders? Here is a wonderfully effortless quick fix you can easy do right now that is so simple a solution you will want to use it before loading your next quilt top on your quilting machine.

Ah ha, here it is...found it, safely tucked away in a drawer, my favorite recipe-- "how to remove pencil marks from fabrics". This is the recipe I feared lost. It is tested and true, and have mixed up many a batch. Since pencil marks are prevelant on old quilt tops, be sure to pre-test in an inconspicuous place first. This is especially important if you are working with Turkey Red or other colors that could have a tendency to fade. Here is your recipe:

Do you have strange creative forces at work in your quilting studio?

It seems there are many "Quilted Muses" having fun disrupting you machine quilting life.

Thank you all for your contributions to the 10 Immutable Laws of Quilting. For those of you who have shared the "goings-ons" in your machine quilting life you received the Terry Twist pattern pack. Thank You!!

Your contributions are most clever and insightful, thanks for sharing.

There must be as many strange forces at work as there are studios...so let's uncover the next 10 laws and let the Muses beware of being discovered!! Please send your Law of Machine Quilting that is daringly present in your studio to sally@sallyterry.com. Just copy and past "Immutable Laws of Machine Quilting" in the subject line. So here is your Quilted Muse at work: