Sebastian's Quilt is Quilted

Finished!

Well, all except the binding. I have to make the binding now. I have kept all the leftover strips from piecing the quilt top, so I have strips already cut to sew together. I do like the scrap-look so I don't have a problem with creating binding out of these pieces. Mind you, I also have some blue fabrics left too, so I'll have a play and see what's best for the quilt.

First hitch I ran into with quilting the top was the thread colour I chose. I used the dark navy blue I had onhand to ditch and when I'd finished that I noticed that it wasn't perfect choice. I really should have found a dusty medium blue thread which would have worked better with the lighter fabrics.

And to this calamity, my godmother came to the rescue with her Aladdin's Cave of threads. She shared a fantastic variegated red-white-blue-green-yellow thread which I used to finish quilting the top. If I had continued using the dark navy blue it really would have ruined the whole quilt. As it is there are some VERY wavy diagonal lines throughout the quilt top and I'm just going to live with them. After all, it's for a boy and it will be used not preserved, so the wavy lines are my perfectionist hangups to get over.

The second issue I encountered was after ditching and straight stitching the inner border I went to start free-motion quilting the outer border and found my machine wouldn't keep a stitch in the fabric. The top thread frayed apart after two loops. Disaster! 

I haven't free motioned in a long while so I wondered if I'd remembered everything correctly. Was I causing the problem myself? What tension should the machine be set at? Was it the variegated thread? What was causing the issue? The machine has just been serviced and I wasn't looking forward to taking it back and saying you've broken my machine, did you change it so I couldn't quilt anymore? So I quickly jumped online to search for an answer.

And low and behold there was the answer halfway through a post from Don't Call Me Betsy's blog. That's two weeks in a row she's helped me out. Change the needle. I couldn't remember when I'd changed the needle, but I did it anyway and tested it out on my scrap of fabric, and immediately I was at last free motion quilting. Phew! Thank you Elizabeth!

So I finished free-motioning the outer border and trimmed the excess wadding and backing fabric away and so I'm ready to get binding and then embroider my nephew's name on the back.