Design Wall Monday, 1 February 2016

 Linking up at Patchwork Times.

It had been awhile since I finished the piecing and subsequent layering and pin basting on Essie's quilt.  This was a project passed off to me by a friend who decided quilting just wasn't for her.  I wrote about it here.  As she had helped me with Nick during my absences when I was off helping my dad, and way back when I broke my foot, I'd been wanting to do something special for her as a thank you.  When she gave me her project "to do whatever I wanted to" with it, I decided gifting it back as a finished quilt would be the perfect thank you.

Shortly after I brought it to the point of being pin basted, I had Marty help lay diagonal rows of blue painter's tape (love that stuff) from corner to corner to mark the initial lines for my planned quilting...and that's as far as I got.

I folded it up and tucked it out of the way, but it would still nag at me since it was in plain sight.  This weekend, I finally decided to get to work on quilting it.  

Back of quilt.

I deliberated with myself as to how wide to make my rows of quilting and finally chose 3".  Originally I'd thought only 1" but decided that was just way too close.

Front of quilt.

I have the binding sewn on the front and need to hand hem it to the backside.  I noticed as I was trimming the excess that I should probably go back and restitch along the edge as my seams for the binding were a bit shallow.

Essie also provided the dark brown thread for this, and I used it, but I will never use this type of thread again.  It was this: 

I initially found this to be very difficult to use in my machine.  It is cotton covered polyester.  I haven't used any type of polyester since back in the days of making garments.  Eventually I got the kinks worked out and was able to use it.  I will return the remaining thread when I present the quilt to her.

She had also provided a fusible batting which I used, but did not fuse.  I did not find it to my liking either.  It too was polyester, and had thin spots, and thick spots, and even a spot where it felt as if there was cording running through it.

I now need to only stitch the binding to the back and it will be done.  I don't think I will attach any sort of label, but I might.  That will be my work later this afternoon.