On the Outs

My sewing machine and I are on the outs at the moment. "The evil machine" is giving me major tension problems as a quilt my friends birthday quilt. Note that her birthday is TOMORROW... and I have been quilting this thing for a few weeks now. I discovered that my major problem with the tension is where my thread spool was positioned. It was catching while on the horizontal spool feed, so I moved it to the vertical spool feed and my problem was solved.....until JUST now:

I am nearly finished, and plan to attach the binding completly by machine, no hand stitching. But I really want to take out the bad stitches....which means this will not be done for months because the bad stiches are spread out on half the quilt! I really hate to give it to her with the top thread showing on the bottom in places, but to unstitch it and re-quilt will take FOREVER. She is coming over in an hour to grill with Lee and I and have a few beers before the two of us head to the Husker game, her birthday tradition for the past two years. Maybe some time away from "the evil machine" will allow me to get back into quilting this guy tonight and we will be on good terms again; then I can give it to her tomorrow. She is going to have to promise, to never show the back of the quilt to anyone though, only the good half. :) Is this horrible of me?
*Please note that the photo shows the worst of my tension problems that JUST happened, and I removed this section. The rest of the stitches are not that bad.

Time to hide the quilt and then it's: "GO BIG RED!" time.