Quilting Commences

The long quilting journey on Paintbox Pizzazz has begun. It shouldn't take too long, but wrestling with such a large quilt can be tiresome. When I moved myself from the downstairs sewing room to the upstairs quilting room, I brought along two spools of gray cotton thread. When I took stock of the threads that were living in the quilting room, I came across a couple of grays I liked better. I believe both of these cones were gifts from my quilting fairy godmother, Ila. Thank you, Ila. I found just what I needed. 

Apparently, I've used this bobbin thread before because there was a partially wound bobbin of it. That seemed like a message from the Universe, and so I settled on the bobbin thread right away.

It's a 60 weight Bottom Line thread. When I was first learning to use Eliza, I tried some Bottom Line thread and had the worst problems getting the tension right. I swore I'd never use it again. Then, my friend Ila recommended the TOWA bobbin tension gauge, and it solved most all my tension problems going forward. Now, I really like the Bottom Line thread, and I have it in most colors.

On top, I decided to try this slightly variegated gray Fantastico thread. I've never actually used this kind of thread before now.

It's a 40-weight polyester thread. Ordinarily, I'm a cotton purist, but I'm expanding my view of thread. I worried the two different weights might give me tension problems. Then, I practiced a little on a test piece, and it was easily adjusted to give me a clean look.

Okay, and then I went to work. I'm doing a sort of "pinwheel" motif in the colored portions of the blocks. I wasn't sure if I could connect these motifs from block to block without cutting thread. I tried doing a sort of loop-de-loop from the center of one block to the center of the next, and that looked fine. I'll just continue working horizontally across the rows this way.

For the black and white corners, I'm doing an upsy-downsy-insy-outsy motif (technical quilting terms). I can work my way across going halfway in and out and up and down, and then make a U-turn and come back the other way to finish it off.

As you look at this backing fabric, keep in mind the name of the quilt is Paintbox Pizzazz, and so my backing fabric is this gray fabric stained to look like a painter's drop cloth. Here's how the quilting looks from the back.

I'm still not sure what I'll do in the actual "paintbox" borders at top and bottom, but I'll figure something out. That will be the last to be quilted. I might just do a large meandering stipple around those colorful circles.

The only other sewing-related things I did yesterday were to finish off the newest embroidery section for Pieces of the Past. It needed pressing and I needed to heat set the color. Then I spray basted it to a muslin backing. Sorry this isn't a better picture. I chose that white "fairy frost" fabric because it reminded me of the look of fine china. It doesn't photograph very well.

And now it's hooped up and ready for stitching just as soon as I finish my current section of the Heartland Barns quilt. This newest piece is so large, I might decide to work it in sections. I'll just have to see how I feel about it as I go along. I like to pin back the excess fabric to keep it out of my way. Rolling this piece up, it was so thick I could barely get a safety pin through it.

The kitties were no help at all yesterday. They spent most of the day sleeping, although they did venture outside a few times. This morning looks no different. Smitty keeps hoping the morning sun will shine on his kitty pole and bake him.

Sadie is still honing her "deep undercover" skills in preparation for her first CIA (Cats in Action) mission. I think she's making good purrogress.

Another day has gone by without any action from our insurance company. It's very frustrating, and I'm having to give myself a good talking-to about it. I spent half the day gnashing my teeth and in the end had only ground down teeth to show for it. Today I'm going to try to keep my mind elsewhere. Obviously gnashing my teeth gets me nowhere except to put me in a bad mood. I'm fairly confident something will happen eventually, but it's beginning to look like it will be no sooner than next week. We have a contractor on standby to do the work, but we don't want to start until we have the blessing of the insurance company. Fortunately Mike's temporary plumbing patch seems to be holding, and we can use our sinks and dishwasher. All things in good time, right?

I'm hoping for a little better weather today. Lately I've been telling myself I need to get outside and do some walking. Wildflowers are blooming, and there's plenty to see. Now I'm just waiting for an improvement in the weather. Maybe today will be the day. As for my quilting. I'd like to get another two rows done. The row I did yesterday went fairly quickly, and so it seems as if two rows would be an easy enough goal to achieve. At that rate, I could have a finish before the end of next week.