The Thread that Binds

Thanks to all of you who have offered help and advice regarding the glue issue on the Happy Villages. Before I go on, I want to make clear that we are still die hard Amazon Prime fans. Nearly 100% of the time it works just as it is supposed to. Mike and I joke that we can hit the "Buy Now" button on our keyboard and then walk to the front door to retrieve the item. They promise two-day shipping, but around half the time, the item shows up the next day. Definitely they messed up with the glue, but they've refunded the purchase price with no expectation that I will return the item, and they extended our Amazon Prime membership by a month. No complaints here...except about the wait...and there's certainly plenty I can work on in the meantime.

Several of you mentioned Elmer's School Glue, and a few have recommended refilling the Roxanne's bottle with Elmer's once I've used it. No doubt, it works just as well. The book author recommended Roxanne's because of it's quick-drying and repositionable properties, but mainly because of its applicator that will allow me to put a tiny drop of glue right where I want it. The entire Happy Village piece is only 16 x 16 inches and so the scale is very small.

The little window pieces are about 1/4-inch square and have to be handled with tweezers. A glue stick is much too large and clumsy for such tiny pieces, and I have yet to see a bottle of Elmer's with a fine enough point to be workable. (I'm not saying they don't exist, just that I haven't seen them.) I'd end up with glue everywhere, but particularly on my fingertips. With glue all over my fingertips, it would be pretty hard to manage those tiny little pieces of fabric without having them stuck all over me eventually.

Yesterday, I had hopes that this "chisel" point might get the job done. However, it requires pressing the tip onto the piece to release the glue, and when I pick it up from the fabric, the glued piece comes with it.

The Elmer's glue pen won't work because it requires rolling over the piece like a ballpoint pen to release the glue. I need something that allows me to dab little bits of glue. I believe this product will be useful for other applications, but not for this one. 

And so you've all given me good ideas. As I've said before, quilters are the most generous and helpful people I know. Thank you for proving my point, because I love that I'm right about that. For now, I'll just wait for the Roxanne's glue to arrive. It's just another week. In the meantime, I'll get back to my quilting. There's always plenty of other stuff to work on in the sewing room.

When the glue pens weren't going to do the job, I went back to quilting the Pumpkin Patch table topper. I finished quilting all the orange pumpkins and then switched off to the green thread. I quilted some stems and vines onto the ones in the center of the topper. When I'm finished with the quilting, I'm hoping I can use one of the fancy stitches on my sewing machine to stitch a leaf vine onto that green border and the one around the outside edge of the quilt.

Here's how it's looking from the back.

With the center quilted, I got to work on the pieced pumpkins. I outlined the stems and leaves and quilted veins onto them. Then I thought they needed a few little vines coming off the leaves.

Remember when I showed these the other days and the pumpkins were incomplete when seen from the back. Now that I've quilted around the leaves, they're looking better.

The green thread was giving me grief yesterday. It's an Essentials thread, and of a lesser quality (and a lower price) than the Isacord thread. When I was getting ready to quit for the day, I switched out my sewing machine needle and used a larger eye. I haven't given that a try yet, but I'm hoping it will help. Also, I might put some thread lubricant on the thread if I continue to have problems. I've mentioned Sewer's Aid in previous posts, and I use it especially with metallic threads.

It is a silicon-based lubricant that will lubricate your thread and allow it to pass through the eye of your needle without snagging. The silicon will not absorb into your fibers either. Just run a thin line from the top to the bottom of your spool, and then massage it in like hand lotion. I've only used it on metallic threads, but I don't see why it won't work for cotton as well. I'm going to give it a try if the breakage problem continues.

Mike and I are heading to the RV show this morning. We're not shopping, just looking. Recently Mike ordered a new truck, and while we don't have it yet, he's talked of little else. We're expecting to take delivery in the next couple of weeks. The reason for the new truck is so that we can upgrade our truck camper to one of the larger three-slide deals. We'll still keep our fifth wheel, but having a larger truck camper will allow us to go on our ATV outings in a little more style. And, for us, traveling in style means we get to take the kitties with us. The new camper won't happen for another couple of years at least, but we'll be truck-ready when the camper time comes. For now, we just continue to look and drool, and we have fun at the RV shows. When we get home this afternoon, I'll get back to my quilting. I'd love to get that topper finished this weekend.