Doodles

 Now that the Chain Link quilt top is finished and pinned, it's ready to go under the needle of the Q-20.  Deciding how to quilt a finished quilt top is always a big decision for me, and I usually doodle little designs on paper.  This doesn't give a very good representation of how the quilt will look when the quilting is done though.  Today I tried something new.  I put a picture of the quilt in my Paint program and drew on it with different ideas:

This worked very well.  As I doodled around, I knew that "I don't care for that," or "That would be too time consuming and too much stopping and starting."  I actually like the arches, I had an "atom" shape in mind.  I have a new curved ruler to make it happen, and was excited to try it out, but when I put the needle and the curved ruler to the test, it was VERY hard to control the ruler and keep it steady.  I made two sewn arches and decided to abandon that idea as unworkable for me at this time.  I will need way more practice with that ruler before I attempt it on a quilt again!  I ended up spending a little time with Jack-the-SeamRipper to pick out those quilted arches.

But the doodles had another very good possibility in the batch, and I opened up a new copy of the picture in my Paint, and quilted the picture again.  Here is the result of that, and it is my final choice.  I will quilt the quilt like this:

I love how there are two visuals in the quilting: a starburst and a star.  This will be very easy to quilt (ruler work).  It is always a big relief to me to finally decide on how to do it!  Making that decision is harder than the actually sewing!!  

There is also a small gray border all around the quilt that is not shown in this picture, but I plan to echo the edges onto that border.  We'll see how it turns out, and I can decide what to do with the border at that point, but that's the plan for now!

Pinning the Chain Link

I'm on a roll!  Today I pinned the Chain Link Christmas Quilt.  I used my new favorite method, of course, pinning on the kitchen table using clamps.

The clamps are 3" spring clamps that I got at Menards for $1.67 apiece.  I bought all there were at the time, and wanted 3 more (I have 10 in all), so I bought three 4" clamps as well.  The 4 inchers are almost too much!  I need two hands to squeeze them open!  But they all work beautifully, and are plastic, so no rust will ever get on the fabrics.  I really love this way to pin a quilt.  I've had nothing but great results every time I use them.

Flannel Backing and Pillow Case

 I have bought a big piece of red/black flannel plaid for the backing at JoAnn's.  I bought 5.5 yards (I'll need to cut it in half and seam the middle), but when I opened it up to make the seam, I found out that the clerk at JoAnn's had measured it wrong!  Luckily, the mistake was in my favor, and I have almost 7 yards of fabric instead of 5.5!  I will have enough left over to make a pillow case to match the quilt!!  Whooo hoooo!

I cut off a yard of fabric for the pillow case, and looked in my box of flannel fabrics and found a beautiful red flannel and a light gray flannel left over from a previous quilt I had made.  PERFECT!  The pillow case will look something like this:

Because of all the backing fabric that I had extra, I was able to match the plaid, and the seam turned out so well that it is practically invisible.  I pinned the two pieces of the backing together almost like I pin a binding--poke the pin through the top, check the backside to see if it is aligned, and finish the pinning,  Move an inch, repeat the process.  So it was time consuming to do this, but well worth the effort.  I am very pleased too with this piece of flannel.  It's a good tight weave.  I have had flannel fabrics that frayed horribly, and this time I really got (more!) than my money's worth.  Here's the seam, if you can see it!

  

Progress Report

 I have finished the Chain Link quilt top.  I decided to do it with a 5 x 6 layout, so 30 blocks.  It's plenty big.  I added a 3" gray border to "float" the blocks, and so it will be a nice size, not too big as the original plan (8 x 6, or 48 blocks).  Here it is: