Under the Needle

I pin-basted this in January, and it's been folded up and sitting on the quilting table ever since. At some time between then and now, I experimented with some free-form quilting in one of the side triangles

which didn't look awful, so I used that "planned nonchalance" to finish all the side triangles.

There really is a plan: loopy circles along the red edge, then a lazy wave that vaguely echoes the curves of the loops. A second wave sort of echoes the first, then a line of loopy circles nestles into that wave. A third line of loopy circles follows (back-to-back, if you will), and the section is finished off with some more lazy waves.

I thought the straightaways would use the same plan, but it didn't turn out that way. After stitching loopy circles and their 2 lines of lazy waves along each red edge, there was room for only one more line of stitching, mostly.

A middle/fifth generically wavy line filled the space, until I got to the bends in the "road". Those had much more space to fill. What ended up happening was: I'd continue echoing one line of waves, double back with more echoing stitches, then echo the other side's waves until the space was quilted enough that I could continue with the single line. It has kind of a flame-like effect, and I'm quite happy with it.

This will be a donation quilt and I expect it to be used, and used hard, so I'm concentrating on filling the space with utility quilting, not artwork.

I've been using (and using up) my variegated King Tut threads on the top, and various YLI darks in the bobbin (most of the backing is much darker than the section shown above). The dark streaks and edge triangles were quilted with "Pharaoh Tales" (all gone) and "Arabian Nights". The light streaks will be quilted using a cone of RW&B King Tut "Freedom". It's the lightest variegated thread in the drawer, and usually passed over when I'm making thread selections. Time to get it gone!

I haven't decided what I'm going to quilt in the red strips, or what thread I'll use.

On a whim, tonight I checked the number of stitches I've sewn with this Viking and converted it to miles (figuring 12 stitches/inch). I've quilted three-and-a-half miles of thread since I bought this machine! Coincidentally, that's my normal walking pace: 3.5 mph (3 mph is a leisurely saunter, 4 mph is a power walk).

(Monday's edit: SEVEN miles when you add in the bobbin thread.)