Vol 2 - Project 6 - Four Patch Lattice - Quilting

The fabrics on this top are so busy, the quilting needed to be very simple.  I decided on a geometric style, square-in-a-square-in-a-square.

Trialing a few sizes and angles

This is what I ended up with

The quilt was small enough to have a go at sewing this with the feed dogs up and pivoting to turn the corners.  To do this, rolling the quilt wasn't going to work, so stuffing it into the harp was the way to go.

Stuff, sew, pivot, is slow going

A large harp helps!

Free motion would have been much faster, but I'm happy with the results of using this slower method.  The stitch length is regular and the lines are straight for a change!

The side setting triangles also got a similar geometric design and were much faster to quilt.

The quilting from the back

I decided to try a slightly different order in finishing this quilt.  Before trimming and adding the binding, I washed and blocked it first.  I've heard about the method a couple of times and wanted to try it out. 

With this in mind, I made sure to lock off  the quilting stitches at the raw edges - these are normally secured by the binding before being washed.  Then I had to baste the excess backing fabric over the batting.  I machine basted rather than hand basted, which was not a good idea.

There was quite a lot of pulling on those side setting triangles when removing the basting from the wet quilt.  I found it tricky to block the quilt before trimming it as the edges were uneven, it was impossible to get accurate length and width measurements.

Here's the quilt drying on my floor.  I spent ages gently measuring and tugging to get those corners square.  A few minutes later the cats were having a wrestling match in the middle of it and the edges were all screwed up. 

Trimming and binding tomorrow.