I've chosen Hobbs wool batting. I had been mulling over the thread decision for quite awhile and have chosen to quilt with YLI 100 wt. silk thread. The only reason I was hesitating is because of the extra cost of silk thread. The colors are brown (235) and off-white (212). I will try not to use monofiliment for in the ditch quilting. I am using silk in the bobbin too.
Step 1. Sat, Feb 23. Quilting the long straight seams in the ditch with the walking foot. I will use brown when I am quilting on brown and off-white when quilting on the light parts. The bobbin thread will always match what I'm using on top. I begin and end with 5 short stitches, but I am still burying the ends of the thread instead of just cutting them off.
Step 2. Quilting in the ditch free motion between the star blocks and the setting triangles. Half of the time I am quilting on the brown fabric and the other half is on the light fabric. I am using the brown thread and trying to stay IN the ditch. In step 3 I was going to quilt the pieces of the star block in the ditch. I discovered that I could do this in step 2 with one start/stop per strip of 6 blocks. This is exciting because I can remove the pins in the star blocks after quilting. Removing pins feels like progress.
Step 3. Sun, Feb 24. Quilting in the ditch around the applique. Normally I would have done this on the vertical strips in the center of the quilt next, but I have very little light thread left and wanted to continue work. I am quilting around the applique in the border using the brown thread. This step is really fun. It is easy to see where to quilt, which is not always the case with marked quilt designs. It is close to the edge so there is not any bulk to deal with. Even though the flowers are not connected to the vines, I am sneaking over to the flower at the point where it is closest to the vine. This means I will have one start/stop. And finally, I get to remove more pins. This step progressed pretty quickly, but was interrupted by a trip to the Indiana Heritage Quilt Show from Feb 27 through March 2. When I returned, I spent some time getting caught up and then resumed quilting. By now I had more light thread so I quilted in the ditch around the applique in the light strips.
Thurs, March 6. I turned in an entry form for our quilt show so now I have to get this finished by April 2. Pressure.
Step 4. Wed, March 12. I prepared the Golden Threads papers for quilting the designs in the setting triangles. On Thursday I started quilting them.
I was so consumed with meeting the quilt show deadline that I did not journal the remaining steps as they occurred. This is how I proceeded.
Step 5. I quilted the design in the brown setting triangles, using the brown thread.
Step 6. I quilted continuous curves on the pieces of the Ohio Star blocks, using the brown thread.
Step 7. I stippled the light background of the Ohio Star blocks, using the light thread.
Step 8. I stippled the unquilted parts of the brown setting triangles, using the brown thread.
Step 9. I did a combination of echo quilting and stippling in the background of the light center strips, using the light thread.
Step 10. I quilted trellis-like shapes in the upper right and upper left corners, using the brown thread. (I wish now that I had appliqued the shapes in the corners.)
Step 11. I did a combination of echo quilting and stippling in the background of the borders, using the brown thread.
Step 12. I did some additional quilting on the largest of the flowers and on the container in the top border.
All of the stippling is what I consider to be medium density. I used approximately 2500 meters of the YLI brown and approximately 1000 meters of the YLI light thread.
I put the How Do I Quilt Thee poem on the label and attached it. I used the traditional binding on the quilt. Without further ado...
