Tristen's Quilt

Tristen's quilt was my next big project. I made the top quilt at the same time as Isaac's in October but didn't actually get it quilted until January. I did most of the top quilt while watching Berkley Square a British mini-series. It was actually pretty good. I enjoyed it.

This was my first attempt at free motion quilting. I bought a darning foot off of ebay, did some Internet research and I was off. It was pretty scary.

I used 100% cotton Warm and White batting and used a meandering stitch with white thread on top and bottom.

Things I learned:

1. Make sure the foot is down when you start sewing (silly, I know, but I forgot on more than one occasion creating lots of little step ladders in my quilting stitch).

2. Make sure to remember to lower the feed dogs

3. Wear some type of gloves to keep traction because fingers lose it pretty quickly.

4. Only thread the needle with the foot in the up position. For some odd reason it really doesn't work well if you thread it with the foot down. I swear, it makes a difference.

Tristen and his quilt. Isn't he adorable!

The only thing I couldn't figure out was occasionally, the needle just wouldn't stick a stitch and I would get these long lines. I would watch the needle going up and down several times but the stitch wouldn't stick until the 4-5 time and sometimes I wouldn't notice it not sticking and so I would wind up with this long line of thread between stitches. Any ideas? It wasn't the speed or tension, it just wouldn't stick sometimes.

Things I would do differently. I love white contrast in quilts, but in this quilt top I feel like the white overpowered the green. Next time I would use a larger more vibrant print to contrast the white, see how that goes.