Quilting Drew's Asteroid Quilt.

As of late, I have been working on getting the Asteroid quilt quilted.  It has been going together so easily, I'm not sure if it's because Dianne is such an excellent pinner (which she is!) or if it has to do with the fact that I am getting so much better at quilting (which I am!) or if it is because of the fusible batting I am using.

I never had Dianne pin a quilt for me before, and I learned a few things from watching her,  She uses a LOT of tape.  She totally smooths out each and every layer so not a single wrinkle is in sight.  She also tapes the batting to the floor, not just backing.  The quilt sandwich stayed put for the entire pinning session, and I was most impressed.  I will be following these steps in the future!

The batting used for this quilt is FUSIBLE batting, Hobbs 80/20 Heirloom.  I never used fusible batting before.  No, I take that back!  I used the batting scraps from the Asteroid in the Kitty baby quilt I just made.  It was smaller, so I sewed the strips together that we had trimmed off from The Asteroid quilt after it was pinned.  I actually ironed that batting to the baby quilt top and bottom, and I was not impressed with how it looked.  I decided I would never use it again!  However, Drew's Asteroid quilt was NOT ironed.  The batting felt a bit "tacky" and was stuck together when we unrolled it to lay it out for pinning.  I thought something was wrong with that batting.  I don't recall ordering "fusible" batting (it came in the mail from Connecting Threads.)  That unironed fusible tacky batting must keep the batting and top/bottom from sliding around.  The more I quilted it, the more I liked it!!  I'll have to re-think that "never again" part...

I have been stitching in the ditch around the stars and shapes in the pattern quilt top.  I may or may not do some decorative quilting when I am through with the "stabelizing" phase of the quilt.  We'll see how it looks and how much time I have.  Here's how the quilting looks: