It'll quilt out.

 I've done the initial sandwiching of this Quilt of Love. Rather than pin baste the entire thing as I would normally do, this time I'm going to try Lane's (That man Quilts?) technique of quilting a section to his liking, then working on another section when he's in the mood, and so on until it's done.

For that reason, I concentrated on getting the inner borders taut and straight. I knew it would mean puffiness in the center and corners; that puffiness has been the bane of this project from the very beginning.

Before I took this home with me, my mother was in a perpetual loop of sew--pick out--sew--pick out in an attempt to make everything lie flat (when she remembered this project, that is). Even when I brought the fully reassembled top back to Oregon with me in April, she fussed about this center and I feared sometimes I'd come downstairs in the morning to find it completely unsewn again!

I'll put in some straight stitching in the maroon and green borders with my Brother 1500 (so much easier to do straight-line quilting with a walking foot than on the Viking with the FMQ foot). Then I'll work on lots of echo quilting (white thread) around the embroidery to pull up the excess fabric.

The edges have been folded over to protect them until they're laid out and pin basted.

Finally, the tablecloth was the perfect size to back this. The embroidered B wasn't in the middle though (!?), and ended up under one of the corner names. I'm hoping it won't be a bear to quilt through, as it's quite a thick initial.