Gridwork on a Charity Quilt

Have not completely finished my baby quilt, however the binding is on and it just needs to be handstitched to the back.

Was itching to stitch so I made a start on the pile of charity quilts I have sitting here. First one I picked up is a cute ballerina panel quilt in pastel pink tones. Decided to try a new thread on this that I purchased at the last quilt show. It is 50wt Konfetti from Wonderfil threads. 

Now when trialling new thread I go by what experience has taught me over the years. This thread is different to Aurifil 50/2 thread in that it is thicker and feels more cottony, so I assumed it was 50/3 thread. In fact it felt very much like the Mettler thread cone I used for the last few charity quilts. So I decided to use the Mettler setting (i.e. tension and speed) that I kept on my machine for this thread and no surprise, it was just about right. Also used this thread on the bobbin which turned out to be a bit of a hassle in terms of the tie offs. On my machine which is a Bernina Q20, I have a programmable tie off function.

It is set to something like 4 or 5 stitches before you start off. With Aurifil 50/2 that gives me a very neat tie off. With this thread it was more like a horrendous knot...very unsightly and hard to digest. Absolutely a nightmare to bury in your quilt. Tried different ways to counter-act this, i.e. starting off carefully in Manual, making a few stitches on the spot and then taking off in Regulated mode but still, the thread kept making these unsightly knots. This slowed me down there for a while...in the end I used the Manual mode to start off with some very small stitches and then moving over to the Regulated mode. I think if this was my own quilt I was quilting I would put something like Decobob in the bobbin which is an 80 wt thread...I think the knotting issue would be far less. Anyway, I have a whole cone of this so I continued with it, as the stitching looked fine otherwise and one big plus...this thread has absolutely no lint!

For the ballerina quilt I initially decided to do the center panel in a meander and then do some ruler work in the borders, however I did not really like that idea. The problem with the charity quilts is that I cannot really mark them a lot other than using a bit of chalk. The fabric is likely not pre-washed and getting rid of the blue marker with water could lead to disasters (think colour run). Maybe not so relevant in this pink quilt but it is also winter over here, so I would have problems getting that dried in a hurry.

Looking at it I thought a grid would look nice over the ballerinas. Have not done this on the sitdown machine before over an entire quilt, so that was going to be a good challenge. Now, if this was my own quilt, I would definitely pre-mark this before basting and then just follow my lines but that was not an option here. So I needed to come up with something different. In the end I used masking tape.

Found the center of the panel first. I did not trust the straightness of the panel, so that is why I did not start in the corners. Maybe it would have been fine, but I don't know...could not think that through. Started in the center and did my 45 degree angle from there. Put two lines in for good maesure to see how accurate I would end up after the first line because I did this after the quilt sandwich was all put together and this has a puffy wool batting, so I was not quite confident that this would work out. Did the first two lines and it did look alright, so I continued without the tape basing every subsequent line on the previous one, going very slowly with carefully aligning my ruler. I used the Handiquilter straight line ruler for this which is about 9 in long, so it was bit by bit, moving the ruler along, following the previous line. I made the lines 2 in apart to match the pieced second border. Was not that confident that it would turn out accurately when I started the crosshatch as I had to move a fair amount of quilt around on the diagonal with a fair amount of puff from the wool batting. Aligned my straight ruler on the previous lines but also used some additional 45 degree lines to keep the angle as consistent as I could. But wow...to my surprise, it turned out brilliantly

Even measured the squares...yep, more or less 2in, looking nice and square. Not that it matters that much if it was out a bit but I was expecting much more inaccuracy. Now to that checkerboard border. Will put some curves in there and finish off the outer border with a bit of a scallop. Still undecided whether I will quilt the smaller 1-1/2in borders down or leave them unquilted.

This, of course, is all taking a bit longer than anticipated, but I felt a bit like experimenting. For a kid's quilt this is quite long and larger than usual. Given that this worked out well, a simple grid is a really good option for a smallish baby quilt. Definitely will do this again.

Karin