More better

 This is looking much more better now!

Now

Then

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I won't say I did everything wrong before, but I certainly didn't do all the right things either.

This time around I pinned much more, especially in and around the embroidery. I didn't worry so much about making the border corners at right angles to the straightaways as I had before.

At my machine I loosened the thread tension with a hearty twist of the wrist. That took care of a great deal of issues immediately. Then I lessened the pressure of the foot

                                                                    and lowered the dogs a bit to match.

Every time I see this photo I want to take a deep breath and blow all that lint away!

Finally, I started from the innermost border and worked my way out, rather than outermost-in as I had before.

So far I've been able to find all the thread I need in my stash. This variegated pink was a purchase made years ago from a quilt store going out of business. (At the time I'd decided that if there were 3 or more spools left of a color, I'd buy them and figure out a use later. All I wanted was enough to complete a quilt, even if that quilt didn't exist yet.)

There's some funny pulling going on in this green border now, but seeing as it's lying on the bias of the backing fabric, I guess that's to be expected. My plan is to echo the pattern of the center green frame within this border, so that should help calm the wrinkles.