"Coach" is quilted

Today was the first time in a couple of weeks that I didn't spend most of my waking hours trying to avoid clawing the skin off my bones. I think I'm on the healing side of this hellish encounter with urushiol, although the carnage wrought on my forearms is still pretty awful looking.

Because I finally had the energy and focus to do something other than feel sorry for myself, I was able to finish the quilting on "Coach is Calling for the Heat" today. As I suspected, trying to stipple a mostly-black fabric with black thread turned into a nightmare in very short order. The tension was off too, so I wasn't sorry to pull out the first line of stippling (it wasn't hard!)

I've been wanting to work through Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project (one quilt pattern a day for a year), and her 2nd day's pattern is "Etch n' Sketch". That seemed perfect--a new technique for me, but one that marches evenly and methodically across the fabric. It would be easy to keep track of where I'd been and where I was going. Because of black-on-black, I'm showing the stitching on the back:

I had completed most of the main quilting a couple of weeks ago. For the pinwheels, I just used a utilitarian serpentine stitch for the blades, traveling into the middle of the squares using shorter and shorter curves, then out again toward the next blade. A simple straight(ish) line just inside the seams for the other triangles anchored them. I used up all my Christmas-themed King Tut (red, white, and green), then put the King Tut "Freedom" thread on the machine (red, white, and blue) to finish. I had another Christmas-themed thread by Sulky that kept snapping when I used it on the top, so I emptied both spools onto bobbins and it behaved beautifully in that capacity.

The eggs were stippled using white and teal threads for the appropriate eggs and King Tut's "Sinai" for the others:

The "Etch n' Sketch" quilting pattern (on the black fabric) would be perfect to tame a border that needs "quilting out".

"Sinai" has a lovely, subtle variegation of tan to brown

 Binding has been machine-stitched on, so the final step of sewing it down by hand is all that remains. Woo-hoo!!