Reg's Quilt is almost done!

Well Reg's quilt is almost totally quilted. I've done almost all of the top; criss-crossed through the squares, 3 lines per section; and put in football, baseball and basketball equipment quilt motifs in the 'blank' spaces. Here's a shot of the back of the quilt, I ruffled it a bit so you could get more of an idea of with the shadows for the overall quilting patterns.

I'm not sure if you remember but when I did the logos for this quilt, I had an inspiration that made doing them a whole lot easier. I created outlines of the images, converted it to black and white then printed it on paper. I used my sullivan's to tack the paper onto the quilt for stability while zigzagging (for the logos, not the motifs) and that gave me the idea for EASY quilt marking without marking my quilt! Again I created the outlines, printed it out, and tacked it on .. then I freemotioned and put the motifs in the blank spaces.







It went VERY quickly, no shifting of my pattern and since i just did a light mist, no residual stickiness. Worked like a charm.

For the borders, i'm thinking of diamonds .. but that's not what they are called, it will be a rectangle with a triangle on top and bottom of rectangle. Then I put the binding on and voila! time to hand sew it on, wash it and reg can have his quilt :D

I decided to try my 15-91 for the quilting - the feed dogs seem to want to sleep on the odd occassion and the quilt stopped moving (!), but I was ready for it after a few times and it went well .. Freemotion quilting on this machine is a DREAM .. not once did my thread break!! It was great!! Since i didn't have a cover plate for the feed dogs nor can I lower them, I used a mccain pizza box to cover the dogs .. worked like a charm!!

This gives me all the confidence I need for the freemotioning that I am thinking about for my kitty quilt .. I'll be getting back to that one soon .. but first swap blocks, and kyle's quilt :S .. poor kid, his isn't even basted yet!

Reg's Quilt is a Mutant!

Reg's quilt mutated on me again .. altho this time it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm not even sure I can say it mutated - more like resolved itself :D. I spent today putting the seam allowance under the logo appliques and then attached them to the quilt. The detroit Tigers logo was a pain with all those twists and turns, but it looks really good - well worth the time and the effort - Reg is impressed!! so that's all that counts as it's his quilt!

I redid the Pistons logo as it didn't match what I finally did with the other 3 logos - I'm glad that I took the extra time because it looks so much better now. I do know that I will likely do all my quilt marking the same way that I did the logos. Basting spray and paper :D ... I'll just have to be VERY VERY careful about pins - or i could use the spray, but my last experience with it made me think twice about it.

At any rate - part of my problem with reg's quilt is that there are so many different fabrics in it - that made it hard to decide what would be the best colours for the borders. I usually use two; a smaller one to 'frame' the quilt then the next one (wider) to emphasize or pull out colours in the quilt. This quilt has 9 different fabrics (actually 10 including the background) so it was quite a challenge for me that way. But I finally decided on stripped wider border of a dark red and lighter green with 9 patch blocks in the corners with the dark blue being the skinny border and the binding. I've got the strips half way sewn now and will finish the borders tomorrow ..

I really like how this quilt has turned out - Reg really likes it too :D My son is turning a nasty shade of green when he sees it, so i'm going to start one for him like this - It'll be for his bday. The other quilt will be a winter quilt for him and this new one will be a summer quilt - He likes UofM, Detroit Tigers, Detroit Pistons, Indy Colts (you know sunday is really interesting in this house ;)). His bday is at the end of June, so I'll have the rest of the school year to work on it while he's not here .. Thank goodness I have a closet in this room so I can stash it away when I need to.