Mauritian elephant quilt 2

For my birthday friend, Karin gave me two huge pieces of batting and when I measured the first one, it measured perfect for the top.  I also had extra-wide backing in my stash thus having everything ready to go.

I exchanged my ruler foot for a Glide foot that is meant for quilting around applique or any other dimensional elements in a quilt although I do think with this flimsy applique I’ll have to quilt over the applique and not just around them.  I also opted for YLI Wonder invisible thread, colour Smoke.

Before I took the parrot for her afternoon nap (under a blanket, on our bed) on Saturday I had the quilt loaded and ready for quilting.  Hoped to get started before the Wimbledon women’s finals started.

Knowing this won’t ever become an heirloom, I opted for dense meandering to try and catch all the applique pieces in order for them not to deteriorate after one wash.  The invisible thread truly lived up to its name as I crossed lines several times (a big NO when doing meandering) but I simply couldn’t see my previous stitching line.  Had a thread break once and getting to find the exact spot where the thread broke was almost an impossible task.

I got a row done before the ladies’ final started, took a break to watch Halep’s amazing victory and then quilted a little more before bedtime.

Early up this morning, I continued and if I ever complained about a skew quilt, this one must be the worst. When advancing a quilt to the next section the ideal is to see either a sashing or stitching forming a straight line over the frame but look at this orange applique to the right…. All over the place and definitely not a straight line.  Fortunately meandering is forgiving and one can get away with murder doing this.

While quilting I also noticed that some of the hand-dyes already bled over the background, I guess from the sweat on the piecer’s hands and I encountered several spots with dried food bits on which made me somewhat sad as I’ve often read about child labour being used without giving these kids a meal break and they have to eat while working.  Couldn’t help wondering if this was the case here too.

There was no way I would be able to square this quilt so I simply kept my ruler a quarter inch away from the outer orange applique and cut it.  Finding something to use as binding will be my next headache.

This is the back where the crossing of the lines can clearly be seen.  Now if I get going with the binding I might just start hand sewing the back while watching the Wimbledon men’s final.