Here’s the view from my sewing chair today:

This quilt has been an interesting exercise in following the line, but not quilting on the line. Let me explain. See, I’m quilting right on the edge of all the appliqué pieces, so that means following the edge of the piece, but not quilting on the line that I’m following, which requires a bit of an adjustment. When you’re used to watching a marked line just ahead of the needle to machine quilt, it’s a bit weird to have to watch to the side a little to get the needle to go where you want. I think my quilting could be better quality-wise, but it gets better as I go. Of course, I’m just about done with the “on the edge” parts anyway now, and ready to start the background quilting, so hopefully I can have this done by October 1st. Always a deadline…

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Here’s the view today:

I was looking forward to using many different colors of thread on this quilt, since I wanted to match or coordinate with the appliqué pieces for the quilting. I have been collecting threads for a while (variegated threads are just as hard to resist as fat quarter bundles for me!) and getting to actually use them on something was exciting. So, all that being said, changing the thread color every few minutes is somewhat painful, as is winding a bobbin with every different thread. I’m running out of empty bobbins! I used a white Fairy Frost fabric for the backing, and I wanted to see the quilting on the back in all the different colors. I’m hoping the back will look sort of like a line drawing of the front when it’s done.

I really didn’t even consider using just one color of thread on the back (which would have taken care of the bobbin problem), because I would have had pop-throughs of different colors of thread on the back, as well as bobbin thread on the top, no matter how well the tension was adjusted on the machine. That’s just the way of it when free motion quilting in all directions, you’re always going to have a spot where the tension doesn’t behave just right, and it has nothing to do with how good your machine or your technique is. My standard rule is to always match the threads on the top and backing to avoid this problem.

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Here’s the view from my sewing chair today:

As you can see, this quilt is quite a walk on the wild side, for me anyway. As I said in a previous post, I used Glue-Baste-It to glue the appliqué pieces down, and then stitch basted some of the larger ones with water soluble thread before basting the quilt top, batting and backing together. The round dots you see in this picture are just glued, and appliqué-ing and quilting at the same time is working just fine. The glue holds them in place perfectly so they aren’t trying to move around. More pics soon!

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