Mother and Miff Unpacking the Quilt in August—EGADS!
This quilt, through no fault of Donna or the quilt, had several problems. The biggest problem was my 2 torn retina surgeries that greatly delayed and added to the complexity. I actually started quilting it between the 2 surgeries, but there were problems with the stitches (the quilter was not forming stitches due to the tight weave of the back) so all the initial quilting had to be ripped out! I found that straight horizontal stitching or horizontal stitching with a slight wave worked beautifully rather than the all over floral and leaf design I imagined. So, horizontal lines—straight and wavy—became the quilting style for this one. In fact, the stitches on this quilt are some of the best tension-wise that I have ever made. Sometimes Plan B works better than the original thought!
However, due to the color contrast between the borders and the main body of the quilt, the horizontal quilting required thread color changes, which in turn resulted in many thread ends to bury and added a lot more time to the quilting.
The first problem with the quilt was the backing was a batik and like many batiks dye remained on top of the fabric. The blue dye was rubbing off on everything, including my hands, and would have rubbed off on the mostly white top. So, I had to wash the backing 2 times to remove most of the dye. The backing was already a fairly tight weave, as most batiks are, and the washing shrunk the fabric pores even more, causing the stitching problems on the long arm when I tried an all over loopy design. I could go into a technical description about how a hook mechanism works on a sewing machine and how the movement on a long arm moves you into and away from the hook, but I’ll spare you that lecture and simply suggest you Google it if you need more information.
In the end, the eye improved and the quilting style worked well. So, all’s well that ends well, even if it took too long.
- 81 1/2" x 95 1/2" Double bed size
- Quilting: Quilted in straight and slightly wavy horizontal lines. Used navy blue, cranberry, and white 100% polyester threads (Omni from Superior Threads-named "Navy Blue”, “Cranberry”, and “Bright White”). Straight quilting and wavy free-form quilting. 10 bobbins (1 navy blue and 9 white) Quilting by Patty.
- Backing: Blue batik supplied by Donna
- Batting: 100% cotton Warm and Natural
- Piecing by Donna
- Pinned into frame October 11, 2019. Quilting on long arm quilter October 14–December 19, 2019. (Patty)!
- Binding to be done by Donna
- QC by Sally and Mother
Shows my bruised nose from a closet accident. Luckily, my bad eye wasn’t damaged.
Sally QC’ing the Rabbit
Mother Doing the Final QC
