pieces and parts

Very slow progress on the bow tie quilt this week…

Thinking things through - since I did not buy anything for the quilt top, and I am using thread I already have, and I have lots of batting already, and I believe I have something for the backing, all that is left is the quilting and if I could do this myself, it would be free!

I have tried to machine quilt before and wasn't happy with the results, so I Googled it and found this article on machine quilting in sections… very interesting - smaller sections so you don't have to fit the whole quilt into that little space to the right of the needle. It recommended using a walking foot for the sewing machine. I looked in the book that came with my machine and what do you know, it has one! Yep, there it is in the little bag of tricks and accessories. So made a trial run of a quilt sandwich and it really does work.



To prepare the blocks for quilting in sections, I sewed them together into 12 rows and then 4 sets of 3 rows each. At this point I decided it needed a border, and a scrap of black I had really set it off, so of course I had to go buy some more black, but it didn't take much.



I want to back this with flannel as it is going to be a couch throw. I have a some red plaid flannel, but my in-house style guru says NO. Carrie tells it like it is and I can always count on her advice,

"too much going on there, with all the different colors on the front, and the red plaid on the back, I don't think so…"

"but the two sides won't be seen at the same time, they are on opposite sides…"

"trust me, there will be times when both sides will be showing at the same time and you will say - what was I thinking?"

So I went to Wal-Mart and found this nice plain flannel, amongst all the printed bolts of sponge bob and frogs and hot pink and red… this one seemed just what I needed, cozy, peaceful… though here in this picture I am not so sure… oh well, it is here now!



It is almost ready for the quilting. Wish me luck, I hope it works!