Stop staring at my quilt sandwich!

I'm betting money that many of you didn't think I'd get this far. You thought I'd go, buy some batting, and realize it's FAR too much work to try and lay out the backing, spread out the batting, re-smooth the backing from under the batting, straighten the batting back out, go fix that corner on the backing, wait - the batting is messed up again... and some more of that until eventually I could place the quilt top over it all, smooth it out, spread it out, smoosh it out, line it up, make it even and pin it into place. Yup, I bet that some of you lost money when you saw the above picture. That is indeed a quilt sandwich held in place with some basic machine stitching.

Sorry, that's what you get for betting against me. I can be determined when I want to be, very determined.

Over the past two evenings, I believe I've burned at least 700 calories alone in sandwiching the layers, pinning them and sewing them together. Maybe I'd expend less energy if I had a table large enough for this process, but I don't. The floor is my best option for workspace (swept free of cat hair of course). Up and down I go, onto my knees, crawling around on my elbows with pins in my mouth. It's a site to see and I'm sorry you missed it. It was well worth the entertainment.

I machine stitched the quilting process along the seams of each of the fat quarters. Weak? Maybe. Soft and fluffy? Definitely. Hand quilting would give it that old world, vintage, I'm a better quilter than you are look, but I'm not going for that look. I'm going for soft, cuddly, and ready to throw on the couch before the ice storm hits on Thursday. I might not even go for that look on my 2nd and 3rd quilts because these quilts are for me and I'm so happy with them, machine quilting and all.

Maybe by my 4th quilt I'll pull out the big guns and hoop it up on the couch stitching away for weeks, months, years... maybe.

But I doubt it. I'm a product knitter, why wouldn't I be a product quilter?

Discuss and until next time...