This was the peaceful scene last evening just before the sun set.
So beautiful! The sun is just a few days away from summer solstice and is very near its northernmost point in its yearly journey. Living with such a wide view of the western horizon has made me very aware of this yearly trip from very far south in the winter to very far north in the summer. I think of how the ancient peoples must have looked at this phenomenon and made stories (myths) to explain the movements of the heavens. It truly feels that the sun, moon and stars travel around the sky and the earth stays motionless at its center!
Progress on the "Entwined" quilt: I left it on the floor since the end of May as it wasn't in the way--there's lots of room there, so I could ponder how I wanted to quilt it. My friend Susan who has a long-arm quilting machine (she and her husband have a wholesale fabric and machine business) had often offered to let me use one and repeated her offer in regard to this 100" quilt. I seriously considered that. I also seriously considered hand quilting it. That would have been so nice! But our daughter and her family will most likely visit in July, and it would have been pretty much impossible (well, totally impossible) to finish hand quilting it by then.
In the end I thought the quilting should be diagonal, following the design, and that wouldn't be suitable for the long-arm. Once I knew what I wanted to do with it, I went ahead and spray basted it with 505. If it were to go on the long-arm, it should not be spray basted.
Here's the process: I cut and laid out on the rug the batting and carefully spread the backing, face up, on the batting. When the backing was smooth and even I folded it halfway back on itself and sprayed a section, smoothed that section onto the batt, sprayed another section, repeating until the half was all spray-basted together. Then turned around, folded the other half down and did that same. When the batt and the backing were bonded, I turned them over so the backing was on the bottom and the batt was up.
In the meantime I had spent over 2 hours carefully pressing both the back and front of the quilt top. I spread the quilt top face up over the batt and treated it the same as the backing. Here's a picture of the quilt top almost all bonded.
Progress on the "Entwined" quilt: I left it on the floor since the end of May as it wasn't in the way--there's lots of room there, so I could ponder how I wanted to quilt it. My friend Susan who has a long-arm quilting machine (she and her husband have a wholesale fabric and machine business) had often offered to let me use one and repeated her offer in regard to this 100" quilt. I seriously considered that. I also seriously considered hand quilting it. That would have been so nice! But our daughter and her family will most likely visit in July, and it would have been pretty much impossible (well, totally impossible) to finish hand quilting it by then.
In the end I thought the quilting should be diagonal, following the design, and that wouldn't be suitable for the long-arm. Once I knew what I wanted to do with it, I went ahead and spray basted it with 505. If it were to go on the long-arm, it should not be spray basted.
Here's the process: I cut and laid out on the rug the batting and carefully spread the backing, face up, on the batting. When the backing was smooth and even I folded it halfway back on itself and sprayed a section, smoothed that section onto the batt, sprayed another section, repeating until the half was all spray-basted together. Then turned around, folded the other half down and did that same. When the batt and the backing were bonded, I turned them over so the backing was on the bottom and the batt was up.
In the meantime I had spent over 2 hours carefully pressing both the back and front of the quilt top. I spread the quilt top face up over the batt and treated it the same as the backing. Here's a picture of the quilt top almost all bonded.
The sprayed section has been partially rolled over onto the batt. I go down on my knees, place my hands at the middle and gently roll it over onto the batt, spreading from the middle to the sides. When the sprayed section is smooth and glued I fold back the remaining section, spray part of that and repeat.
Because I'm doing this on the rug, I spread newspaper on either side to protect the rug from the spray glue.
The last section is ready to be sprayed here. As I spray the edge that's over the quilt top, I move that section of newspaper to protect the right side of the quilt top.
When I laid out the blocks I was squatting or kneeling on the quilt top. The next day I had a laugh because there definitely were some muscles running up the back of my leg to my bum that were not accustomed to being used that way and were complaining pretty loudly about it. I forgot that until this morning when the same muscles complained in the same way about the same treatment!
I feel that quilting should reflect and enhance the quilt design. One thing my friends and I commented on at the Red Deer Quilt Show this year was how "overquilted" many of the quilts were. We think that detracts from the beauty of the quilt.
For this quilt it seemed that some simple lines following the meandering coloured-square lines would suit it best. The first diagonal (the center diagonal, of course) I sewed more or less straight through the edges of the beige sections. When I laid it out on the floor to see how it looked, it wasn't good. The quilt has very curvy lines and the straight lines, diagonally across each square of a block, looked completely out of place.
The second try was to follow the same lines, about one square in from each of the coloured-block lines, with wavy lines. Aha! That works. It complements the design of the quilt.
By evening about 1/3 of the machine quilting was finished. I'll post a photo when it's completed.
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