Machine Quilting

On Saturday I taught a machine quilting class and here are the brave souls practising their skills. There is so much to learn about threads, needles, battings, basting, tension, and quilting designs.
I used one of the comfort quilt tops (made by guild members at Quilt Bee Day) to demo how I pin baste a quilt and I know the students will be checking my blog to see how it turned out. We brainstormed lots of great ideas for quilt designs and in the end, because I have so many things to do before Christmas and needed a design that was quick and easy to finish, the quilting design became boring squares.

The method I used for the pattern was to cut a paper square the size that I wanted, pin it to the quilt and free motion quilt around the paper square. Unfortunately I learned that I didn't like this method...it's much harder than it looks to quilt a straight line with a free motion foot on. It did finish up quickly, but I must admit that I frequently found myself thinking "Why didn't I go with the leaf idea...it would have been more fun"?!?!
I like this photo of the threads that I used on this quilt. It really shows you that I use all different kinds of threads to get the job done...Aurifil, King Tut, Sulky, and Mettler are the 4 threads that are in this quilt. And even though I was really quilting at top speed, I didn't have one thread break...yippee!!

I was happy to deliver the quilt to the comfort quilt co-ordinator Donna at the guild meeting tonight and have one less project kicking around the quilt studio. Here is the quilt with the quilting finished and ready to be passed onto the volunteer binder. This quilt top was made with fabrics from the stash of our guild founder, who passed away earlier this year.