OH NO! NO! NO!

I was ready to put the scrappy basket weave quilt on the quilt frame so I could start hand quilting.  YAY!

I got it onto one of the cross bars and started rolling the sandwich.  When I finished with the top bar, I inserted the bottom bar into the leader cloth and started rolling it back so it would be even.

Just as I was about to lodge it into the holding brackets, I heard a crack!!!  OH NO! What was that sound?  I looked at the top bar and it had rolled off the frame. When it fell, the middle bar cracked in half!

Oh my goodness what a setback!  I was so disheartened.  I almost screamed, cried and jumped up and down!

Now I had to undo all the rolling from the top bar. I rolled the quilt onto the bottom bar, took it off the top bar and left it on the table.  I immediately went to my cabin and called the company that makes my quilting frame.  I had bought this quilting frame used from a private party and had only used it once for the pink baby quilt that I wrote about on this blog.

Well as I scrolled through the company's website I found a manual for my frame model and found out that it didn't have the middle extension steel brackets to give the bars more stability when a large quilt is on the frame. That's why the bar had cracked. Not enough support!

Well needless to say, I ordered the extension kit (new bars) and the installation kit for the extension kit.  It includes the steel brackets.

So now I am waiting for this order to arrive sometime next week.  Can't start hand quilting the basket weave quilt until that order gets here.  I hope that I will still make my deadline for my daughter's birthday . . . 3 months!