D272-78: Oh my goodness - it's done!

Long story short: the house had been sick, with Hub home since Tuesday and Bub coughing and gooping everywhere.  But in the midst of that I took quiet moments for this quilt, and all of a sudden I could see the end!  Blogging took a back-seat to quilting (as it should really).  Here's how it went, in pictures...

My thread choices for the top quilting

All the zigzag quilting complete, with the sashes to be quilted.

My idea for feeding the bias tape to the sewing.

The detail of the quilting at the corners.

The whole thing, getting an airing in the sun.
You've no idea how paranoid I was about birds flying over.

Plus some other things I did in between sewing, which require less attention and are more interruptible :)

Children's clothing patterns; ideas for the next quilt.

D266: Pink through grey

Today I quilted the white bands between the pink, purple and grey zigzags.  I love my machine.

I've also found it's easier to manoeuvre the quilt if the bulk in my lap is instead flung over my shoulder.  I swap shoulders at each pivot.  Around the time it's too short for flinging, and rests against my chest, is when the beginning needs folding on the tabletop.  Pictures later.

And can I just stress how important it is to dust around your work space? Maybe use a radius that's as long as your quilt...

D265: What a marvellous entrance, folks...

Sort of...

The practise run.  This is really easy! Why am I doing this? Yeah, don't get ahead of yourself, A...

Practise run, back & front, with different stitch lengths.

I'll do 4mm stitches, I thought, which will mean I'll go quicker! But the longer the stitch the harder it is to match it to the vertical seam, which is a pivot point.  It's a 7cm sewing line, so 2.5mm is a much more sensible stitch length, if you're going to be all mathy about it.

Things we're going so swimmingly with the practise that I decided to get on with the actual real deal.  Then, on the first zig, the machine took in the bobbin tail and chewed on the thread.  Hmph.  I trust that's what happened anyway - it looks suspiciously like the symptom of a not-properly-loaded bobbin case, or one that's popped out but since I've been sewing on this bobbin for quite some days that should be unlikely.  Hmmm. 

Anyway, after that inauspicious beginning, I was off and things looked pretty swish.

One thing the practise run doesn't help with is managing a larger quilt on the machine.  The rolled portions need pinning to be held in place, which I only did at the ends.  Here's my quilt at the end of a quilting line, folded for the easiest management.

It also took a while to realise that a zigzag pattern means you feed rolls of quilt through the machine throat, only to pull it back through after a pivot.  The last few zigzags are quite awkward.

I intended to work in the same direction for every zigzag so that any pulling of the fabric (which shouldn't happen much with a walking foot, but it's not magic) would be less apparent.  Going back and forth, while maybe helping to square the quilt, might created a sort of pulling of the fabric between the quilting lines.  However, it might be something I'm willing to risk when it comes to the edges so I don't have to manoeuvre a whole quilt through the throat of the machine.

Actual quilting!

The back looks nice.  It's a friendly  and soft fabric but I wish I'd had more conviction and chosen either a plain grey or persisted with a finer geometric pattern.  The zigzag lines are going to be really striking and unfortunately lost in this woodland print.  I'm quite annoyed about it but it's likely something the recipients won't even think of, thankfully.

One quilting line takes me 10minutes... That's 6 hours and 40 mins to go! Wheeee! 

D263&4: Getting theeeere

I'm sure I'm dragging my feet over breaking ground on the actual machine quilting.  But... I just wanna be sure, 'kay?

I bought a bunch of threads that compliment the colour ways.  The backing thread will be all white cotton, and I'll only use the coloured thread on their matching strips.

I also need to practise using the walking foot. 

My quilting plan

If I 'stitch in the ditch' - which is sewing on the seam line and a common way to start or stabilise a quilt, and apparently terribly popular - I'm only going to be stitching on white fabric.  All the coloured seam allowances have been pressed toward the coloured fabric to keep from having a coloured shadow under the white fabric.  Stitching in the ditch, I think, will not really stabilise the coloured sections of the quilt.

Another slight problem I have is the division of the space.  Initiwlly I imagined stitching in the ditch and doing one or two echoing lines in each coloured and white band.  But the widths don't easily divide. 

Each band is 3.5cm - or 2 ³/₄" - wide. The inches are useless (coz how do you divide ¹¹/₄? (Hint: making it ²²/₈ doesn't help)). 35mm isn't a prime but it's still only got two factors.  I'm not interested in stitching every quarter inch nor am I willing to stitch every 7mm.

My solution: I'm stitching a quarter inch line either side of the zigzag seam.  This will stabilise both strips and protect the joining seams but only give me two lines to sew per band.  I'll only be going horizontally, with no vertical lines planned at this stage. For a cot sized quilt I think this should be strong enough.

Here is how I prepared a strip of quilting cotton for practise zigzags.  The green line represents the joining seam and its junctions because, in practise, those are the only guides I'll have for the quilt line.  I'll be using a walking foot attachment and if I need more practise I'll use already stitched lines as a guide.  

Now, I need to actually put foot to fabric and give it a bash! (Have I said that before...?)

The plan and tracing, then ruling and marking a 'vertical seam' guide.

D254: The top is finished!

These are the sashes I attached. 

Obviously there's a bit of trimming left to do.  I couldn't decide whether the sides sashes or top/bottom sashes should be the longer set, so did... umm, I don't know what to call it...  it's that thing where, like, the right side is capped by the top sash, but it caps the bottom sash, which caps the left ash, which caps the top sash... Know what I mean?

Anyway, I'm chuffed.

D246: It looks sooo pretyyyy

I actually made a decision and chose a sequence!  Here it is all sewn up, unpressed and bulky seams yet to be clipped.

I plan to do a white border, possibly thicker on the ends and narrower on the sides, and use quilting to create texture there.  It crossed my mind to continue the QST style with only white fabric too, which might look kinda cool.

Anyway, decision are afoot, but I am terribly delighted with this so far. Yiiiiii!

D245: The trouble with rainbows...

...is that they all look pretty!!

Maybe if I make it smaller and compare some more options it'll help me choose.

One of these is nicer, right?

Nope.

Where should that damn grey go?!

A part of me feels I shouldn't all it a rainbow lesson actually follows the sequence of a true, natural rainbow - which is red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and then violet - and it seems I've instinctively erred that way too.  Still... I'm torn. Obviously.

D242-4: MILESTONE!!

It's been a while since I've completed a part of something this big.  I may have mentioned earlier that the last quilt I began - a single bed quilt made from locally printed Australian themes - has only the top portion done.  It's on pause and even though I organised the pieces the night I went into labour, maybe I'll finished it on Bub's 5th birthday, or something.  It was a while ago and its packed away so neatly and quietly I wonder if I'll ever worry about it again.

ANYWAY. 

Completed chevron strips. Rainbow order with a dark teal / dark blue top & tail.

I've finished the colour strips for this baby quilt.  

Rainbow order with red/orange top & tail

I'm pretty sure I want to do a rainbow sequence with the two dark colours as top and tail, but it tried out some other arrangements just in case.

A mixed order.  I quite like the grey, teal, yellow, pink sequence.

Mixed order that seems to have become dark to light

I'm pretty confident too that I want to do a grey backing, maybe a grey pattern but something that will be complimented by a zigzag quilt pattern. I think, though, that I'll border this with some of the white fabric first.  I have a few coloured stripe fabrics that might do well as binding.  It's all a bit wait and see but oh so fun to plan!

D233&4: Dark teal and grey

I've made the dark teal strip by sewing it in blocks of four, and then sewing them side by side.

It took a long time, but it was more accurate than my first strip.

I wanted to try again with the previous way, which was making a top strip and then a bottom strip and joining them in the middle.  It's a much quicker way to piece and I can order the HSTs before I start.  

My machine needs a service and it's main glitch is feeding the to layer faster than the bottom.  So pinning, to counter this problem, and some slight stretching, to ensure the squareness, seems the order of the day.  This third strip, with a faster, more efficient method and careful matching has made a strip with a good accuracy rate.

Onward to yellow!