Wow - Mr. Darcy finished this quilt so rapidly that there was scarcely any time to make progress photos & post them! The comfort was loaded last Sunday, but I didn't get to start stitching it until Thursday. Well, Thursday morning, before I left for work, I did the basting and one row, and when I got home that night I finished it - including the binding! And I was not up very late at all.
I mentioned last week about having serious tension issues when working with a reel of YLI, and so I switched support to Superior So Fine for this quilt. Did I have tension problems again? You betcha! This happened while I was basting the comforter to the backing fabric, and was all user error. When I first started, I asked myself, "Should I see the stress before I baste?" My self quickly replied, "Nah, it's just basting. You can see it after." BOY! Was that a mistake! I should make known something was amiss when I felt NO opposition at all on the top thread when I first threaded it, and it wouldn't pick up the bobbin thread for tying off. Did I agree then? Nope. I actually basted all 3 sides, and started a try before I actually checked the tension. Boy, was I surprised at what I found underneath the quilt! I only gave the tension wheel a good crank clockwise, and that was it - problem solved. I really had an epiphany then. So Fine needs a tighter tension because the wind is so thin, so when I wish to use monofilament or King Tut, I should relax the stress from this point. Hopefully that will preserve me from mucking the tension too much - I shouldn't need wide cranks left or right, and if I do, that means something is horribly wrong. Brilliant observation I think. :) I chose a creamy white for the quilting stitches. It blends in pretty good with the comforter in most places, and where you can see the quilting, it looks pretty cool. I chose a 10" pantograph design with a floral motif to go with the fabrics, and observed that I really do like 10" pantographs. Why? Well, the harp area on my car is 24", which gives me approximately 22" of actual quilting space front to back. So on a 10" panto, I can really get two full passes without having to roll, versus a 16" design where I'd accept to curl after every pass. I think it just depends on how intricate the purpose is; this quilt took almost 3 hours to quilt, maybe a little less because I have frequent breaks. Here's a fairly good picture of the quilt top. I actually took the sentence to set up the lights, and I'm much more pleased at the color interpretation - now you can see that the comforter is actually pastel! The game was also fun to make - pretty large stripes with some extra blocks incorporated. This is a very great shot of the quilting too: The cover I did all by machine. I stitched the back to the front, flipped it to the back, stuck a whole lot of pins in it, and did a stitch-in-the-ditch from the movement of the quilt. I was pretty much sewing blindly, but the key to the stitching is to hold a very precise stitching line, and to GO SLOW. No, it didn't look perfect everywhere, but I can assign the bobbles to me not using my walking foot from the beginning, and stitching too quickly. I will definitely do more quilts this way; as much as I love binding by hand, I just can't save the clock for about of the ones I wish to do. I am really often a perfectionist, but I've seen some fairly famous quilters with their not-so-perfect binding, and I believe maybe if I give a little perfection in favour of acquiring more things done, people won't grouse about it too much. After I did a last review of the quilt (clipping loose threads, giving it several good passes with a lint roller, making certain the cover is quite secure, and a final spell-check on the label, I packed it up into a pillowcase I made with the material that was left over. I still had a man of leftover binding that, with a serged edge, made a perfect tie for the pillowcase! Making this pillowcase gave me a neat idea for future customers who get longarm service done me, and as a result, I let a new toy winging its way to my Studio. I take the perfect place for it in the way with Mr. Darcy, but it will require finding a new house for my spare sewing machine. My customer has seen some progress pictures of the quilt, but I didn't show her the quilting, the binding, or the pillowcase. Hopefully she'll be agreeably surprised! She already sent me a bill saying I "accept a customer for life." That's pretty cool! Happy quilting!
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