HST Update

Well, I took a two week break from this quilt, last updated here.  Once I finally got back to it, I realized I still had nothing for the backing, and no plan for the quilting.  Sheesh.  So I went thrifting and found a nice sheet to use for the back, and quickly had it sandwiched.  Then I was completely stuck on how to quilt it.  I think what made this quilt so much harder to figure out is that I am planning on entering it at the State Fair (completion deadline is Sept 2nd!).  I guess the idea of people judging it makes me a lot more hesitant on what to quilt...I just want it all to work perfectly together.

Well, that ain't happenin' with this quilt.  The backing coordinates, but doesn't match.  And after spending hours looking at other people's quilts online, there just isn't anything that would be perfect for this quilt.  My husband suggested just doodling out some of the options to see how things turned out:

At one point Matt suggested I do a big spiral, but I said no, it'd be too hard.  About an hour later I came across this spiral quilt and was sold.  Seeing/reading how someone else did it made it sound simple.

So first thing this morning I got started.  Everything was going great until I realized my spiral was going the wrong way.  I hadn't thought of a right or wrong way when I started, but it became quite clear as I quilted that there was!  The wrong way means that for every outward spiral you're adding more quilt that has to be shoved through the throat of the machine.  By the time to you made it to the edge of the quilt you would be shoving/pulling/wrestling the entire quilt through!

If the spiral is going the "right" way, the opposite is true: for every spiral outward, there is less and less material that goes through the throat!

So this was a problem, a problem that was only getting worse with every turn.  So I took the quilt off my machine and decided there had to be a better way.  First I did more doodling:

The bottom two are my original practice spirals.  The top one is going the "right" way.

The only way to continue on with my current spiral was to flip the quilt over (quilting on the back) and jury rig my walking foot guide:

The guide is made to fit on the other side of the foot, but I needed it on the left side.  The only way I could get it to stay in the right place was to use the my other guide (the one on the bottom) and then tape the walking foot guide on top.

I taped it in two spots for stability.

Then I got quiltin' and wow did that make a difference!  Everything was going great, until I hit a pin (on my 6th go-round, so that's not too bad, right?).  The pins are on the top of the quilt, so every time I get near one I have to blindly take it out before continuing.  And one got past my radar.  Whew I'm glad I was able to salvage the quilting!  Here's how far I am now:

The lines are 1" apart, so this is rather slow going.

And now it is time to go put in a full bobbin and go around in many, many more circles!