QFK#1

It took me two more days to finish the quilt up, about two and a half to three full days total.  On day two I started by sandwiching the pieces together.  I don't like to lay my quilts on the floor unless I have no other choice, so I use a giant piece of styrofoam that I saved from large shipping box.  I attach one side of the backing with giant binder clips then pull it tight to the other side.  I use straight pins to anchor it into the sytrofoam then place the batting and top piece while keeping everything as tight as possible with the pins around all edges.  Next I can go through and baste with the safety pins.  The styrofoam helps here too because you are not poking through to your table or floor.

I bought myself the cheapest walking foot that I could find and started with diagonal lines across the four patch blocks.  Once I started I figured that I should have thought it out a little before so that I would not have to stop and restart for each line.  Lesson learned - one continuous path to quilt (even though feeding the quilt through the small throat of my machine is not easy) is still easier and cleaner.  I used a continuous line to quilt through all of the main blocks in an echo stitch about a 1/4" inside the block.

In the outer border I decided that I would practice my free motion quilting.  I decided to go with some stars and added a few words.  I discovered that I still need lots of practice.

"hope"

"dream"

"play ball"

On the third day I finished it up with the binding.  I was worried about not having enough backing to make the binding from but it turns out that I had plenty, with some to spare.  QFK asks that the binding be attached with a zig zag stitch so it took me awhile to figure out the best way to do this.  You can see the final stitching in the pictures above.  It worked very well other than a couple of spots that I missed and had to go back and double stitch.

Zig zag stitch with the walking foot.

Overall I was very happy with my first QFK quilt.

Finished quilt with some bad lighting and photobombers.

My first label.

I will drop it in the mail to QFK headquarters today and start on my first quilt for my local chapter of QFK.  I have been putting together "kits" just like this one with all of the extra fabric that I have - looking forward to dropping some off with Silicon Valley QFK next time they meet.

Just part of my stash.