The Free Motion Quilting Project: Week #8a

Directions for Week 8:  All Over Quilting on a Real Quilt

This is just part one of working on this challenge.

So it's taken me a while, but I finally have a real practice quilt basted for Leah Day's challenge of doing an all over design on a whole quilt....

Probably my first quilt top - finally basted!

This top was pieced by me when I was in junior high or high school - well before my present life!  I don't really remember doing it, but sort of remember picking out the material... but maybe I remember working to line up the stripes...  My mom made a pattern for me out of this thick fused material* and scissors must have been used to cut the templates once they were pinned to the fabric. * I don't know what it's called but it has her handwriting on the pieces.

I found these in a box I opened a few years ago when I was going to clean out the garage but instead opened the box and remembered sewing and quilting!  It was like a time capsule with the patterns with funny Mary Tyler Moore style type....  The inner points don't line up, and the seams are 5/8 of an inch but Leah suggested we find an unfinished quilt and quilt it so this is what I'm going to be working on!  (Somewhere in the garage I supposed I have 7 or 8 quilt tops and backs that I sewed when my son was little.  In the house I mainly have blocks and parts - not quilts!)  I ran out of my curved pins so had to use the straight ones I had purchased 16 years ago or when ever it was that I got them.  This was a really pain to baste - I brought it to the adult education class to use their table - but the wide table was gone so I had to use a table that was narrower than the piece.  I think I got done what I needed to get done though.

Fugly back - hopefully my last safety pin basted quilt.

I have been using the material that was supposed to be the back of the project so instead pulled out the Indian feather stuff I got to use for backing....  It wasn't wide enough so I added two strips going in opposite directions to get the width I needed.  I now think this is fugly fabric - had to bite my tongue when the ladies at the workshop were saying how they liked the feathers!  Everyone likes different things - it was nice they liked something I brought to class -usually it seems they say how I should ask the teacher to help me!!

When I came home I went to Leah Day's site and ordered a container of 100-Pinmoors.  Total including shipping =  $43.45 USD


So I hope this will be the last time I use the pins.  I haven't basted many things and appreciate how nice pins are over thread basting - I just hope the Pinmoors will save my nails and fingers more!