WIP Wednesday - Week 38 - Highlight Quilting...

And continuing in the vein of finishing quilts.... I finished this quilt top back in June, but never blogged a photo of the top finished, maybe cause it was too big? Look at it pegged to the clothesline at the old house? Couldn't get the whole thing in the photo! I have done a pieced backing too but no photo, I think I got tired of the wind blowing it around. Last news of this quilt was back here. I hadn't even put the borders on. I think I was waiting on some more fabric from America? I do remember folding it up when finished and promising myself that I would not touch it till the old house was sorted. And it has been since here, over 2 months ago. That was my mental carrot I was dangling to myself. Won't start quilting this till the house is sorted, won't start quilting this till the house is sorted. Then the flickr Dolls Quilt Swap Round 7 started up and that got in the way.....

Anyway, enough dithering Helen, it was time to put this quilt on Mum's frame! I'll admit it took a few days to pin it on. I unpinned it twice as it wasn't quite right, it's going to take practise pinning and rolling tightly. In the shot above I forgot to put the clamp on the quilt to pull it over, see the wrinkles at the end? Should be a bit tighter. Still it didn't seem to matter in the end.

I have put my machine back on the frame. I'm rather impressed at this machine. It is "only" a Brother, about four years old? Not a super cheap machine but not a really expensive one, just an ordinary Brother Quilt Master BX300 or something like that. A workhorse though, it quilted this perfectly! I turned the tension up to nine, normally its a four, and it was perfect! Absolutely perfect, I was happy.

So two days to pin it on, school runs do get in the way of quilting don't they? And then the quilting began. I was using "bobbin fill" for the backing thread, went through nine bobbin changes. Who was counting? Just an all over meandering stipple again. I think I have mastered this one, time to move onto a stipple with hearts or stars thrown in.

Here it is cascading down the frame when we unpinned it. It is not finished though. Because my machine is just a normal machine with a little tiny throat, by the time I got two thirds the way through, I had so much quilt rolled up in the throat I only had like a few inches to actually do any quilting. I suppose we could have taken it off, turned the quilt around, repinned it all back on and started at the other end..... But all that pinning! That is the worst part. So I'm going to do the last bit as normal, normal being at the Horn table with a quilt bunched around you wrestling it under the machine normal! I am going with Mum tomorrow to look at this machine. Finger's crossed.