progress on the broken dishes quilt

Last Friday evening I finished assembling my broken dishes quilt top. The blocks finish at 18", so the assembly went relatively quickly, even though I do pin at each intersection. Measuring 72" x 90", it's a generous twin size. (It's based on this quilt pattern, but this time I made 20 blocks rather than 12 and I skipped the borders.) This is a good stash buster!  

Yesterday I spent several hours prepping the quilt for quilting. It's just like painting....doing good prep work in the beginning pays off in the end. I used spray baste (on the top layer only) to keep things nice and flat. Then I used pins to hold all three layers together. Spray baste isn't my preferred method because it's messy, sticky and smelly, but I wanted extra insurance to avoid the layers shifting. I think it's going to work well!

Inspired by my friend Stephanie, who has been working very hard to learn and up her machine quilting skills, I decided to push myself out of my comfort zone, too. Rather than default to my loop de loop quilting, I'm doing some "cinnamon roll quilting", as I like to call it, instead. I've done this on parts of other quilts before, and on a mini quilt, but it's a big commitment on a twin size quilt. I'm taking a lot of deep breaths and forcing myself to slow down and let go of perfection. (Always a struggle...) I'm already looking forward to the crinkle that this one will have after it's washed! It feels good to be stepping out of my comfort zone...kind of. Hahahaha!

Because it's always fun to hear from you....what is your "go to" quilting design? What is one quilting design that you would LIKE to be good at? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

this is going to take awhile

As you can probably imagine, I am very eager to get my log cabin quilt finished. Last week I worked hard behind the scenes piecing a quilt back for this monster quilt....

... and I immediately basted it. It was a little chilly out on my 3 season porch (it was only 37 degrees), but duty calls! Ha! No matter the temperature, it is nice to have floor space to baste a king size quilt.

I debated sending this one out to be professionally quilted, but part of me really wanted to quilt it myself. (Maybe I have more stubbornness than good sense? I don't know....) I consulted a few friends and they thought that I should quilt it myself. With their votes of confidence, I decided to jump in and just do it. Even though I've quilted (literally) over 300 quilts, I still get nervous before I begin each one. This one, especially so! (I don't want to mess it up!) I am using the Tiara to quilt it, and so far, so good!

I'm quilting simple loop-de-loops and now that I've gotten into my groove, it's actually kind of relaxing. (Can you believe it???) I love how the tiara foot glides over the quilt and doesn't distort the strips. That's especially important for a quilt with this many seams.

Here's a photo to show my entire quilting set up. The tray table to the right holds my pin bowl, the bobbin side winder, my coffee, a sample quilt sandwich to check my thread tension, and a sewing needle to bury my thread ends. To the left, I have a few chairs to help support the weight of the quilt. If you notice, I prefer to pool the quilt (rather than roll it) to deal with the bulk during quilting. It's much easier to manage that way. Any way you slice it, that is a whole lot of fabric to manage. The extra throat space in the Tiara is super helpful!

This is the situation UNDER my desk while I'm quilting. :) It's pretty cute.

My kids are on spring break this week, so I'm not sure how much quilting I will get done, but I'm hoping for the best!

My daughter wanted to do some sewing today, too, so I pulled out my hello kitty sewing machine and she's been working on a few things. (YAY!)

So far she made a heat pack (made from flannel and filled with corn) and she's moved on to a doll quilt. It's so fun to have her sewing!!! (I'm trying to keep my excitement at bay so I don't scare her off. Hahaha!) Hopefully I'll have more of HER projects to share this week, too.

Happy Monday to you!