My Creative Space

And basting, and hoping, and wishing, and basting...

nice lines courtesy of the walking foot

And the completed top!

finished back - featuring a bit of my own fabric screenprinted at Harvest

 

I spent a lovely few days at the beach shack working on a baby quilt, and it is the first quilt I ever made with wadding and, erm, actual quilting... It's a present for some lovely friends who are expecting their first baby.
I took my darning foot in the hope of doing some freestyle quilting, but boy, that was the last time I tried that. Donning some washing up gloves and attempting to wrangle the quilt through the poor Bernina swearing loudly at 8 in the morning is not an experience I want to repeat. All I managed to produce were some sad lines that looked like worms. So I decided to quilt it in the ditch, which is just a fancy way of saying follow the lines. I used a newly purchased walking foot, which works great, if you work out how to attach it to the machine (thank you husband with the relevant skills). And I basted the heck out of it too - I didn't pay much attention to the basting process first, which resulted in the quilt practically eating itself when I started the stitching. It just bunched up like a Victorian frock. So I did it again, and I really hated that part and was prepared to declare that quilting is not my thing. I just had to repeat 'pins are your friends' as I downed coffees and basted until my knees were getting sore from crawling around on the floor. But when I sewed those lines and the quilt turned into that lovely quilty texture I did get quite hooked on the process. I do love the result, particularly the texture. I love the fabrics too. They seem special to me now that I am using what I have in my stash and not buying any new fabric so that I can downsize and start focussing on using recycled fabric.

More spaces over at Kootoyoo.