I cleared the work tables this morning of the accumulated clutter (I'm very tidy in the house, but not in the studio!) to make room to layer up the latest Linus quilt
Several dozen pins later it was ready to quilt
I changed the free motion foot, as the large plastic one is better for quilting when I use fleece on the back of a quilt (I had to get the instruction book out, as I couldn't remember how to change it .... the tiny screw on the underneath releases the bottom bit of the foot)
I thought I would try this thread, which I have had in my stash for some years
Although it is a thicker thread, the label says it is great for machine quilting - but unfortunately it wasn't great when I tried a sample. The thread has a lot of slubs, and just wouldn't run smoothly through the needle. So I changed to my everyday quilting thread and ........the thread broke, the thread jammed, the thread just wouldn't behave! There is a lot of debate among quilters as to whether it is the fault of the thread, the machine or the quilter when it all goes wrong. After many, many years sewing, and having had several brands of machines and many brands of thread, I would say it is probably a mixture of all three. After some tedious unpicking, I switched to the walking foot, quilting the centre panel with a sort of scallop-shaped stitch
and using straight line quilting to create a secondary pattern of squares in the middle of the triangles. I haven't decided how to quilt the other borders yet!
Malcolm in the meantime was having a more successful afternoon, cutting both the back grass ......
........ and the front one
He also had a successful morning - finding this fleece reduced in Asda to a mere £2.50!! It will provide backing for two small quilts for Linus
ps - it's not the photo that's fuzzy, it's the fleece!!