Time to Quilt Stairway

Time to Quilt Stairway

It's time to quilt my Stairway to Cat Heaven quilt.  I took a free motion quilting workshop in March put on by Wayne and Linda Kollinger of Tuxedo Park Designs, Calgary. I have been machine quilting for about 8 years, but I learned a few new things which I wanted to put to use, including some easy 9 patch quilting patterns.

The Stairway quilt is about two thirds 9 patch blocks so I started with quilting them first.
I used a black polyester thread in the bobbin, and a fine lilac coloured polyester thread as top thread. It is on a big spool which doesn't really fit horizontally in my machine, so I put the spool in a jar next to my sewing machine and then threaded it in as usual.  I used a "quilt sandwich" to treat the tension settings before I started sewing on the actual quilt. (One of the useful suggestions from the workshop. (Thanks, Linda.)

Motoring right along! 

"Auto" tension setting didn't work really well, "3" seems to be the best. (The workshop suggests that you try various settings first, changing them by half a setting each time.) I put my free motion foot on, then dropped the feed dogs.
I started out at 2, then, 2.5, then 3, then 3.5, sewing a short line of each on the practice sandwich. "3" looked like it had the best top and bottom tension, so that's what I went with.

Another thing to remember, which avoids the 'rats nest' of threads at the back of your work, is to pull both threads to the top of the quilt, make a stitch or two to secure them, then snip them off carefully so they don't get tangled in your sewing. Then away you go! 

I did the "flower petal/ circle" pattern (which I'd learned at the workshop) on the 44 nine patch blocks, then echo quilted around the appliquéd cats and appliquéd moon on the sky portion. After that I isolated some sky areas and did a "narrow cloud" meander pattern on the rest of the sky.

Echo quilting around the appliqués

Next question, how to do the three 2 inch borders.  The fastest approach would have been to do all three together as one larger pattern, but I decided against that. I used black thread on the black inner border and did my often used vine leaves all along the lengths of each side. It doesn't stand out at all, but that's OK. Then, looking at the next border, (the night sky/ dark grey colour,) I was thinking about doing moons, but a heart pattern jumped into my mind so I sewed some simple sideways hearts attached to each other at the bottoms. I also used the black thread, but after doing one side and seeing how well it went, I was wishing I had used the lilac thread. Oh, well, too late!

The scrappy 2 inch squares border is getting the same "flower petal/ circle" design as the 9 patch blocks using the lilac top thread.

The outer grey border is getting a simple scallop pattern. After that I'm cutting off the extra batting from the quilt edges, and trimming the Fishbones back fabric to 1 inch out from the edge.  Next step will be to press that 1 inch outer fabric in towards the raw edges of the quilt, then pin it over onto the quilt top, so it can be sewn on, creating the outer edging. (A mock edging).

Then it will be done after many weeks of work!  Always a proud, exciting moment!

I am getting really attached to this quilt after all these weeks of work. It is going to be auctioned online for the Animal Haven Rescue fund raiser in May. I might have to bid on it myself! ;)
http://www.animalhavenrescue.ca

Happy quilting!

Stairway to Cat heaven at the Heartland Show 

All in all this was a fun quilt to make. It involved both piecing and appliqué.

Again, I would recommend if you are going to do raw edge appliqué, then use "Steam a Seam 2" as it is very forgiving. You can stick your appliqué pieces onto your quilt top temporarily, see how they look,  then move them around as many times as you like until you decide where you want them, until you press them on. It is also very forgiving if you press a bit too much or too little.

Happy Quilting!