If you've read my first 3 blogs, you'll have been following the story of my first quilt, a 28-fabric, king-size bargello.  

Last time, I had just finished pin basting it and now it was on to the final stage....quilting.  I was ready (that's a stretch) to try my hand at machine quilting.   However, I hadn’t done anything like free motion yet…I just had quilted in the ditch with a walking foot.  Lynda (my quilting buddy who I'm crediting with getting me hooked) had sold me her old quilt table….it’s small, but at least I can sink my machine down so that the table is level with the machine bed.  That made a huge difference in and of itself.  I used a desk and an old dresser (also donated by Lynda) to put behind the sewing desk (for more surface behind the machine) and on the left side to support the quilt.

I had researched the web extensively and picked Lynda’s brain even more extensively.  So I dropped the feed dogs and I figured I would give it a go,  Once I’d got the tension right (trial and errror), it was a matter of finding a pattern.  I didn’t know how to stipple yet but I knew how to trace.  Since this was a quilt inspired by our log cabin and the forest around it, I decided to use a continuous line pattern of a pinecone with pine needles that I’d found in a quilt magazine.  I enlarged it and traced it (with a felt pen) onto tissue paper a cazillion times (it seemed).  Then I just used a bit of that washable fabric spray adhesive to stick the tissue paper onto the quilt top and proceeded to stitch and follow the lines.  I started in the middle and worked my way outwards using two colors of varigated thread...a brown for the dark parts and a cream for the lighter parts.

I found that just the weight of the quilt and having to move it around was the hardest part.  Those cotton battings make the quilt quite heavy.  It wasn’t too difficult to do the machine quilting, just very tedious.  Let me tell you, picking the tissue paper off with tweezers was absolutely the most horrific job.  Argh!  Of course, since I’d started out with pinecones and the tissue paper nightmare, I couldn’t just switch to something else, so I continued with the pinecones until I had finished the central dark and first surrounding cream area.  I quit with the pinecones at that point to preserve my sanity.

After that central area, I switched to stippling…or my idea of what stippling was at any rate.  I just did it….figured the heck with it and went for it without practicing.  I used the little bargello squares to keep me semi-lined up.   In hindsight, it kind of looks like the ends of dog bones doesn't it?  Hopefully, no one but me was going to stick their eyeballs close enough to see all the flaws anyways, so don't look too close!  It took me the better part of a year to finish quilting that puppy. 

And, once again, here's the finished quilt which currently lives on our bed at our log cabin.

Next time...beyond quilt #1...the era of kits!  A great way to learn!