Celebrate Panel – 1

Remember the new panel I purchased from Honest Fabric in May this year?  I wrote about it in THIS blog post.

From receiving it until now, plenty of other activities happened but it gave me ample time to stare at it and get some plan of the quilting I’d like to do.

Step 1 was to wash the top adding Retayne to the water to secure the colours won’t bleed. Once this and the ironing were done, I started marking the top.  Now this was the very first time I marked a quilt top before loading it to the frame and even though I decided on not too intense patterns, it still took a chunk of my time.  I also made sure I left plenty of space for random free-motion quilting without having to use rulers.

Luck was on my side when I started looking for backing and found the exact size Percale in my cupboard.  I planned to quilt using white thread, so the white Percale as backing would be perfect.  I’ve also ordered ballpoint needles especially suited for Percale, Batiks and Polyester and this would then pan out perfectly.

My needles along with lots of other fun goodies arrived and just as I had everything in order, a quilter that booked a space for June, months’ ahead of time, informed me that she’d come by next week for her quilt to be quilted.

Luckily I have two sets of zipper leaders which gave me the opportunity to load my Celebrate panel and fully baste it thus when the customer quilt arrives, I can simply zip it off the frame and replace it with it with her quilt. I use the weirdest and wicked thread colours for basting as I need to easily see these when taking them out.  On this quilt, it was a vibrant orange on top and chocolate brown in the bobbin. Huge meandering with long stitches secured the layers.

The basting went fast and with more of the weekend ahead I could get started.  Did the feathers first and for those scared of doing feathers, do watch THIS video by The Threadworks Factory.  Patricia really explains this so well.

This was followed by some straight line designs in the blocks.

Today we celebrate Fathers’ Day with the kids and the men still plan to disassemble and reassemble kids beds as a swop between the kids happens.  I think I should just sit there quietly, sipping my wine and overseeing the activities.