A couple of weeks ago I posted a picture of a painting called The Kiss. At the time I was not happy with the painting and said I may do more work on it.  I did. This is the result, the same painting, The Kiss, but now with a purple background and a few other tweaks.

I am still not completely satisfied with it. When I looked at the picture of the painting I saw some further adjustments I would like to make. The question is – at what point do you call a painting finished and sign it?

This painting is acrylic on stretched canvas, 16×20 inches.

Quilting

It is something that you have to do. If you are lucky, only once in a while. If you are unlucky or careless you do it often.

Ripping Out Stitches

Quilters rip out stitches when the seams don’t match up, when the points are cut off, when the machine acts up, and when we make a mistake.  I made a mistake. I put a bobbin with the wrong colour of thread in when I changed the bobbin. Then I proceeded to do several long rows of quilting before I realized what I had done.

We have to take out sewing so often that there is a tool used just to rip out seams – a seam ripper – commonly called Jack, for Jack the Ripper.

 

Jack has two prongs, a long one with a pointed tip and a short one with a blunted tip. between the two prongs is a very sharp cutting edge. You use it by sliding the long prong under one of your stitches until the thread is cut by the sharp edge.

This is how you can cut out one stitch, but when quilting you have many stitches – perhaps a seam that is several feet long – to remove. You don’t have to cut every stitch to get out a long seam.  Cut a stitch about every half to three quarters of an inch along one side of the whole seam. If your stitches are very close together you will have to make your cuts closer together.

Then turn the quilt over. On the this second side of the seam use the pointed prong of the ripper to lift up a section of seam that is loose because the first side of the stitch was cut.  Don’t cut this. Catch hold of the loose thread and gently but firmly pull.  The seam will start to unstitch itself.  Keep pulling and the seam will come loose just as far as you cut the stitches on the other side.

Now I can get back to quilting my quilt!