Bright quilting

Yesterday was an all day quilting day. Remember that Bright fabrics quilt I was making for a Prayer and Square quilt? The one I wondered if it was too bright for Japanese tastes? It seemed silly to be making a quilt that might be too bright for a Japanese prayer quilt but at the same time to be thinking that my fabric stash wasn't bright enough to make a Thousand Colors quilts. Sooo, I changed my plans and added a few more blocks to make the Bright quilt the right size and I have dubbed it another Thousand Colors quilt for Italy.

I had trouble finding matching border fabric in my stash, the colors were just a little off, but it isn't an impossible fit. Then to quilt. The previous quilt was done with a walking foot and just straight stitch in the ditch. Okay, this will be my machine quilting practice quilt. I checked Patsy Thompson's website and Elaine's blog. Elaine has done some wonderful things on her domestic machine and I knew she considered herself an as yet amateur machine quilter. She insists that the most important thing is PRACTICE. I wanted to try doing overall quilting on a quilt of this size and chose a flowery feather pattern. Then, I spent a few minutes trying to burn the pattern into my brain by drawing it over and over on an white board. Okay. Can I do this? I'm as ready as I'll ever get!

A few adjustments on tension and I took the plunge! Not bad, not bad. Before I'd known it I'd spent three hours at the machine and was afraid to stop!

"If I stop now I might get out of the mode and not be able to go back to the uniform swirls and curves! Better to just keep on going!"

Probably not good for the shoulders but by late lunchtime I'd done the overall quilting design.

Back at the sewing machine after a peanut butter sandwich and a long walk with Choco and I started in on the border. Hey, this is fun! I had the whole quilt finished by 4:00 but that still means I must have put nearly 8 hours into quilting this yesterday!

Last night I put the binding on noticing that there are a couple small puckers in the border area backing. I must have pulled a bit too much when quilting the border, and the pins were in my way for quilting this area so I'd already taken them out. Well, I'm not going to repair this. It was an excellent quilt for practicing and I'm quite happy with my beginning attempts! Elaine's right! Just get in there and decide to do it and practice!