Thought you might like to know a first hand experience of the Machingers quilting gloves and the Supreme Slider as recommended by Leah Day.
I found her Free Motion quilting tutorials and posted the info a little further on down the page or
here
An Update:
Quilters, Needleworkers, Bloggers, are all such lovely sharing and caring people. Joy, one of the talented Gum Tree Designers, left a comment on this post not only nice words and thanks but telling me how to do a link. Wow! and I can make it work! I know it does 'cause I tried it twice.
Thank you so much Joy!
You can check out Joy's blog by clicking on the 'JOYPATCH' button in the sidebar and while you are there enter her give away, or really get carried away and enter all 9 Gum Tree Designer giveaways for all the info and links either use the buttons in the sidebar or go here
[Now I have seen other blogs that instead of having a great long link can hide it behind one single word. Well guess what?, haven't found out how to do that yet - not even sure what you would call the action so that I can google it. Ohh well, another learning curve, along with the free motion quilting, sorry, I digress, back to the gloves and slider.]
The gloves are great,nice and light so shouldn't be too hot in summer, rubberised finger tips really grip the fabric and elasticised wrists to give support and help guard against fatigue, the packaging blurb states ' for reduced fatigue and tension in hands, arms, shoulders, and neck'. Well that might happen with practice, but I can tell you that my shoulders still creep up over my ears, so more time spent practicing is a must.
Yes, you can fiddle with the cotton with the gloves on, but really, thread the needle?, again, maybe with practice, but to use your scissors or snips and to pull the bottom threads up is do-able.
A bit of a pig in a poke to guess the sizing, really it is more on the length of your hand/fingers than the width. I ordered the Medium/Large but would have been happier with a smaller size as the fingers are a bit long, another joy of short stubby fingers, gee such a long joyful list.
However because the gloves are stretchy, I found that to push the gloves up the fingers and seat them firmly, much as you see in old movies when some glamorous socialite was getting ready to leave the room, keeps the grippy fingertips at the end of your fingers and not hanging over the end in stitching space. No don't ask, the story is just too too sad.
The Supreme Slider is fantastic, soo slippery, and sticks nicely to the machine surface BUT, yep its a big 'but', if you have a top loading bobbin the first indication you have that you are out of thread is when.......you run out!, The mat is opaque and the bobbin is hidden. The mat has to be picked up to keep an eye on how much thread is on the bobbin and also to change the bobbin.
Now as time marches on and that 'new possession' feeling wears away I might take a pair of scissors to the mat and cut a slot from the punched hole out over the bobbin cover, not much as it might catch, but it's a thought. Yes the mat is trimable, in fact its suggested that you trim the mat to the size of your machine bed but as I want to show the group the gloves and mat on Wednesday I have kept my mat intact,.... so far!
Now if you have good hand strength neither of these products are probably necessary in your life, but with reduced hand strength anything that helps to cut down on drag and friction can only be a good thing.
