Process

I made a start on my 1000 Pyramid quilt...

Once I basted this thing, I went over it with the basting stitch of the HQ Sweet 16 in a broad meander pattern.

You can see how I stuffed the whole quilt to the left of the machine...not rolled up, just bunched together in a big bundle. Once that was done, I went around the edges with the Versa Tool, still using the basting stitch

That is one thing I have used from the beginning with this machine, saving me heaps of time in terms of going around the edges of a quilt and I am used to doing this with the Versa Tool (has these little notches which I line up so that it stitches about 1/8in from the edge).

Then came the Baptist Fans...could not resist trying this, although I was still not convinced that this would work

Starting off...

...and having 2 rows done

Hard to see, even though I am using a 40/2 wt Aurifil thread. The scrappiness of the quilt just soaks it up. This is a good thing as consistency is a bit lacking, however overall it looks really good. I am making the fans slightly bigger, i.e. 5.75in instead of 5.5in (my largest ring gives me an 11in circle) so that the fans do not land on the seams. This is where the HQ Echo foot became really handy

This is the 1/2in Echo Foot. Looks a bit intimidating, but I must say I almost find it easier to stitch with this. Have not once trailed off and find it easy to work with. Took me a while to work out a workable process for quilting the fans, i.e.

- placed the quilt in a bundle to the left and then moved the bundle under the machine to the right onto the next table as I went along

- had a chair next to me with all the rulers and bitses, as the quilt kept pushing things off the table

- did temporary marks on the quilt of 5.75in width and height so that I would roughly stay on track

Overall, a half ring set would probably be better in terms of holding and aligning the rulers, however I am obviously not going to buy yet another ruler set just for this. I bought the circle set specifically to do circles of various diameters and this set is particularly handy as you can ride on the inside for some of the sizes. 

We will see how this progresses. For now, all is well...will be very interesting to see how I am going to manage this as I am getting more to the middle.

Karin