Possibly Ocean Effect

 

The pin basting for the quilt in process that I'm working on had to happen before I did much more walking foot quilting. 

My trusty Parmesan cheese container of safety pins came out. This is such a tightly woven cotton, they had a little trouble getting through the fabric. Or maybe the safety pins need sharpening? Is that even a thing?

As promised I veered off from horizontal, using the corner of the green rectangle as my starting point.

I have postponed the decisions on the sheer fabric until tomorrow.

And then I went vertical for the section in the right hand upper side. So far so good.

I think the possible (maybe probable) name of this quilt is now: Ocean Effect.

Ready To Quilt

Running Out of Rain Cloud is all ready to quilt.

I used this fun print for the backing (not at all pieced for once!) because it actually kind of goes with the solid colors used. I used fusible Hobbs 80/20 batting as per usual for non-bed-sized quilts. Now to figure out how to quilt this thing. All I know is I'm starting out with hot pink thread...
 

Stitch Happens Layered

On this hot day, I braved the steamy iron and got my Stitch Happens quilt layered up with my favorite fusible batting (Hobbs 80/20).

 Once again, there's just enough to go around on the back. I always cut it too close. It's annoying when you're quilt layering/basting, but yet I keep doing it to myself. Memo to me: Make Bigger Quilt Backs.

Tomorrow I'll layer/baste the Slopes quilt and then it's time to switch over the sewing machine into walking foot mode.

Plaid Time

 

I came home from Sew Day with another quilt to get quilted and bound for BAMQ Community Giving. Yes, I was drawn to the backing fabric that was showing. Frida Kahlo+Dia de los Muertos so of course.

But then I realized it was friend Jaye's wonderful plaids top that she'd just finished and turned in to be quilted. I don't wear much plaid at all, but I really love the look of plaid. I used to wear my Mom's wool tartan skirt to high school or my great grandpa's plaid wool overshirts in college. It's probably leftover from my fascination with the 80's Vivienne Westwood punk looks. (Ballgowns in tartan, etc.).

Anyways...I'm excited to get to work on this lovely. I got it all ironed and then smoothed out the quilt sandwich up on the design wall with a 24" ruler.

 I carefully took it down and draped it over the ironing board to pin baste. Ready to quilt! I think I'll try to do a plaid motif.

Two Basted

 Three day weekends always get my schedule off, plus two out of three household members have been very ill this weekend (thankfully not me). Anyways, I finally got myself organized yesterday to be able to do some quilt basting today, and hey, it worked out with absolutely no safety pins required.

First up is checking out which way the backing versus the top goes.

I'm finally trying out the Quilter's Dream Orient batting I bought years ago. It's a blend of silk, bamboo, Tencel, and cotton. The hand of it is quite lovely and soft, very drape-a-ble. As this is meant to be a bed quilt that'll work out great. I hope it quilts as easily as advertised.

This one needed the spray basting treatment, using the Odif 505 and a lot of the advice from Christa Watson.

I hung up the stick-i-fied backing (sticky side out of course) and had to sit down for a bit before putting up the batting. 

Placing the top on the batting was easier, I unfolded a bit at a time and smoothed the surface with a 24"ruler.

Onto the next one, the Orange Bullseye. I used my usual batting, the Hobbs 80/20 fusible for this one. It worked out very well. 

I even did some pre-ironing up on the design wall once I got the sandwich mostly smoothed out. 

It was a bit of a workout, but then I went horizontal on the ironing board and it wasn't quite so tough. 

Two quilts are now sandwiched and ready to be quilted, hurrah!

Back Into Orange

Back into the orange bucket I went to make the back for the Orange Bullseye quilt. You can see the bullseyes through the lighter colored fabrics. I'll be using the new brand of fusible batting I just bought, hopefully it will hold as well as my old standard Hobbs.

And while the orange bin of fabric was out, I made the binding too.

The binding babies are stacking up, only one official one there in the middle corralling the blue/grey binding for the Japanese Houses quilt, the dark blue for the Ruby+Bee challenge quilt and the orange for the orange bullseye quilt on the left. I used empty thread cones to wrap them up.  Guess I better get the quilting done on these three quilts, right?

Oh no....I made the mistake of looking at the binding babies website when I went to grab the address to link and they have a Halloween Binding Babies collection and they are way too cute and luckily for my wallet they are sold out.
 

Under The Needle

 

One of my April To-Dos has gotten underway today. Safe At Home is finally under the quilting needle.

This was one of the quilts that I spray basted with Odif 505 back in October. It's been folded up and ready to go since then. And finally I was ready to go too. So far the spray baste is working out just fine, there's no movement and no gunk on the needle either..

Spray Away

 

Well, I actually tried out Christa Watson's spray basting on a table method. I didn't take any in-process pics as I was otherwise occupied and rather sticky-fingered. These pictures were taken before I ironed the quilt sandwich, so it's even flatter now.

 It seemed to work out really well. The spray went on smoothly without blobs and was fairly easy to see where more was needed as long as you were quick enough. The smell of it didn't bother me at all which was a relief, I tried it masked with an N-95 at first, but then removed the mask to take a phone call while I continued spraying and realized it wasn't too bad as I was spraying out doors. I used the Odif 505 spray.

The only part I had any trouble with was folding the pieces up to carry them back up to my studio, then it was a little hard to get them unstuck and apart from themselves. I pinned the backing up on the design wall and the batting stuck just fine without ironing. Then the top stuck just fine to the batting. Now that it's been ironed on both sides, I'm finally ready to try quilting this thing. Hopefully the stick-i-ness doesn't bother the quilting process or gunk up the needle.

Pin Baste Improvement

Even though I used fusible batting for my Lone Round Robin, the batting was kind of old and didn't seem to have the same amount of stickiness, so just in case, I decided to pin baste the area I was going to start quilting on. Memo to me, order some more fusible batting for the next wall quilt.

 Clover Wonder Pins worked really really well for me. They were so much easier on my fingers than the old stand-by of regular safety pins. The colors are bright, especially with the white, so they'll show up well on most fabrics.

Now that I'm getting older, that kind of ouch adds up a whole lot quicker. I really want to save my finger and hand strength for the actual quilting! 

I found that they were very easy to pin and un-pin, the plastic handles on the top of each pin are a perfect size to grasp. It's a clever design, and I think the actual pin itself was very high quality. They're smooth and very sharp, and just the right size too, so it won't leave giant holes behind. I was able to grasp them and take them out even with my quilting gloves on. 

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