On The Frame

Today was spectacularly full of progress. I finished, ironed, and squared up all of the Grandmother's Fan blocks. Now, I only have to piece the top, and I have another flimsy to add to the stack. It looks like it'll finish around 92" by 92" inches.

I ironed the backer to Flying Geese I, and got the top, batting and backer loaded onto the frame.

I decided to do this quilt with a tan thread, because I didn't like any of the purple machine quilting threads available at JoAnn's. They were all too bright - the same for the pinks. I'm moderately happy with how it looks so far:

As you can see, I'm doing a smaller meander/stippling in the spaces around the triangles. This is giving them an awesome 3D effect that I really like. If you look into the background, you can see that I was attempting to do parallel lines in the long stripes. I wasn't too successful for that first try, but I think I'll have to leave the stitches in. They're really small, now that I've mastered my speed versus that of the machine, and I'm just not patient enough to rip them all out.

I don't hold out much hope for the lines at this point. The top was pieced a VERY, VERY long time ago. It was probably the first that I'd pieced on the machine, and while I thought I'd measured twice, and cut once - Yeah, not so much now that I'm at the point of quilting the darned thing. It's puckering, quite a bit, because the border fabric that I used for the stripes distorted. I hadn't realized just how much until now.

Ah, well. I'll chalk it up to another learning experience in quilting.

Anyway, I'm nearly halfway done. With any lucky, I might have this top quilted in time to go in the wash!