Winding Ways finished!

I finished the Winding Ways/Wheels of Mystery quilt! I must say, as with life in general, things sort of worked out in the end. Although I was having real concerns about the waviness in the borders, once laid out it really isn't that noticable. I probably need to block this (light wash and pin to the carpet, right? Keep cats out of the room... impossible) but I went ahead and put it up on the wall last night.

Quilting... I used the walking foot and did graduated circles inside the 6 main circles. That worked out well with only a little puckering at the cross threads. BUT, that meant that there were the centers of the circles that were unquilted. That's not so good. I went ahead and meander stitched the outer background with my freehand quilting foot and that turned out much better than I though it would. I thought about doing leaves inside the circle centers but couldn't see the quilting at all with all the mixing of batiks, so I took out the small portion I tried. The seam ripper is my best friend. Instead I got the walking foot back out and stitched in the ditch at the inner circles. More puckering. What I SHOULD have done was stitch in the ditch at each block FIRST, then stitch in the ditch around ALL the circles, THEN do the gradated inner circles.

That left only the border. I was undecided as to whether I wanted to leave the border plain to show off the dyed fabric or do some fancy freehand quilting. I tried a few inches of feathers. Not the look I want at all! Seam ripper back out. I tried fronds. No, no, no. Too fussy. Rip, rip, rip. So it was back to the walking foot and I did gradated lines around the border.

This would never get too many points from a real machine quilter and even my friends who aren't machine quilting enthusiasts may shake their heads at the jumpy stitches and poofs here and there. But it is great for my wall and I'm pleased and proud to show my first attempts at blending batiks and quilting with a walking foot.