Earning my keep

The Rail Fence quilt is finished, but before putting anything on the donation stack I like to take photos of the front, back, and label--the usual suspects. This one is a biggun', though, so I gave up trying to find a suitable surface at home and took it with me to this weekend's Chorus Management Team meeting (I was the scribe). I knew I'd find a couple of willing volunteers to hold it up while I snapped some photos.

Roughly 78" x 90"

More info about the fabrics in this post

What I had not anticipated was that one of the members would fall so completely in love with it that she'd buy it right then and there! (It was that Jinny Beyer Rose Garden fabric that caught and held her eye--the fabric I hadn't known what to do with for all these years.)

This was quilted primarily with King Tut threads--Gemstones in the bobbin, Joseph's Coat in the colored rails, Sphinx in the neutral areas on top, and the gray/black variegated Signature thread in the border.

Gemstones #1061 and Joseph's Coat #918

Sphinx #996 on right

I can always rely on King Tut thread for a stress-free quilting session!








Free-hand loops and figure-8s filled the rails,

then I used a stencil to lay out the pattern for the border. I added extra diamonds to the inside of the pattern to provide more stitching--otherwise, it felt as though there was too much area left unquilted.

The variegated "grey" turned out to be something quite different!

It really wasn't grey at all--instead, it was a combination of black, green, and purple! I had never really looked at it that closely, and it wasn't until I started using it on this project that its true colors stood out to me.

It was also a PITA, snapping quite often when I first started out. Liberal applications of Sewer's Aid helped some of that, and changing the threading path so that it unwound from the top instead of the side probably helped as well. That's contrary to popular wisdom, but I had noticed that unwinding this from the side added more and more twist to the thread as it worked its way through to the needle, which I believe adds unnecessary stress to the thread and ultimately results in snapping and fraying at the needle's eye.

One more comment about thread before closing this post. I like to use a hunk of soft foam to secure the thread end of cones,

but two hunks are also very handy for storing bobbins of the thread inside the cone until the next time it's needed.