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Irish Chain Loaded and Ready

After that on-line class I was anxious to get started on the Double Irish Chain.  I loaded it last night.  This quilt is 81" x 110" and it was about the time I was pressing the backing and top that I was wishing I had a 4' x 8' ironing board!

Here is the quilt loaded onto the frame.  I just wanted to show how I float the top by basting the batting and then bringing the top up to the basting line and basting again through all 3 layers.  Clear as mud I'm sure!

Here you can see that I do roll the quilt onto the bar but the upper edge is not attached to the take-up roller.  I find that I have more control over the top this way and it is much quicker too. I will have a video of how I load my quilts on my website hopefully in the next week or so, it depends on how long it will take me to finish the Double Irish Chain and get another ready to load!

The border fabric had me stumped for awhile as to what sort of quilting I should do.  The pattern of the fabric is quite bold so I felt that anything obvious would be just that - too obvious.  I decided to use the pattern of the fabric as a guide and chose to quilt a meandering ribbon.  Because there was going to be quite a bit of back-track quilting in the pattern I didn't want to stress out that my quilting lines were going to be perfect so that is why the ribbon 

style - the lines are supposed to cross!

 Here are a couple pictures of the back of the quilt so far.  I'm using simple muslin for backing and King Tut #951 Brooklet on the front and Bottom Line #652 Statue in the bobbin.

Tomorrow I will start to quilt the centers of the chain :)

Mystery Quilt complete

What fun!  I'd never done anything like this before but it was well worth it.  I started fairly early in the morning pressing everything and loading the quilt.  By the time I was done the instructions for quilting were posted.  They came on video's so we were able to watch as she laid out the quilting sections.  We were shown a different way of doing feathers and you can see in my quilt that I could do with more ppp (practice, practice, practice) but in the quilting business that goes without saying:)  It's all finished but for hand sewing down the binding.  I would have had it completed in one day but after starting the feathers in a star block I decided to change the thread to a darker one so that the quilting would stand out.  My back let me know that it didn't appreciate my being bent over the frame that long ripping out 1/2 a star block so I left it and finished it this morning.  

It is all complete but hand sewing down the binding.  It is about 54" square.

The quilting designs are quite basic but still look good.  The background fillers are just a simple zig-zag line and winding ribbon.

  

Time to tidy up the studio again and get ready to quilt the Irish Chain.  That one will take me a couple days to complete I'm sure!