And Sew It Goes...

Today I am going to give you an update on the scrappy bargello adventure.  After much consideration, I decided I was going to do a spiral in the middle of the bargello and then after the blue border, I will do straight line stitching radiating outwards.  This top has issues, that inner blue border has a couple of pleats due to the stretching of the inside portion. . . yikes.  No matter what I tried, there was no fixing this so I am now going to revert to my word of the year ITLLDO.... this is not going to make the quilt function any worse for its intended purpose - warmth :)

Here is a picture without the borders to let those of you new to my blog what this top looks like:

The pleats in the blue border are on the left side.  You can't see them, but trust me, there are there!

I decided the spiral quilting for the middle portion was doable on this top after reading a tutorial on spiral quilting done by Crazy Mom Quilts.  I liked the thought of doing the very center of the spiral with the FMQ foot and then switching to the walking foot.  A couple of things I have learned the hard way.... :

1.  The direction in which you do your spiral makes a difference!!! I went the wrong way - what does this do?  It means the bulk of the quilt is ALWAYS in the throat of the machine!! UGH!  I am dealing with it but I am getting a workout!

2. I did not take my Queen Supreme Slider off when switching to the walking foot. . . Oh that was a big mistake!! I now have several rips in the slider where I sewed through it :( I think I can remedy this with duct tape but that is a problem for another day!

3. Doing spiral quilting with a walking foot is much different when dealing with a large king size quilt than when quilting a smaller quilt! Part of this may be due to the fact that I am now fighting the bulk of the quilt in the throat of the machine - I guess I will find out if this is the case the next time I do this :) Oh yes, I will do this again - I love the look and I think I have made this way harder for myself than it needs to be . . . I am famous for this haha

4. The more often I stop and reposition the quilt the better.  For smoother starts, making sure that the needle is lined up to go the precise direction it should by checking out the stitching line behind the needle is very helpful.

Here are some pictures I took this morning of this monstrosity being birthed in my machine, at least that is what it feels like haha

It feels like this quilt is swallowing me up as I try to keep rotating it :)

In this picture you can see that I am getting very close to the edge of the blue border... YAY :)

The other thing I did when I sandwiched this quilt was that I spray based the back to the batting.  When I sandwiched all three layers together, I pinned the middle out to the blue border and then used spray basting for the outer portions.  So far this is working well . . . I am holding my breath that all will go well throughout the rest of the quilting of this quilt.... keep your fingers crossed!!

OK, I gotta get back to this - hoping to have most of the quilting on this done today. . . unrealistic? Probably, I am famous for unrealistic expectations of what I can get accomplished in a day :)

Linking up with Lorna for Let's Bee Social and Lee for WIP Wednesday.  Check them out if you haven't and if you are here from there, welcome!

      

 

Until next time, keep on quilting!!