Modernizing the FMQ: Episode 11

Machine Quilting with my Tiara~

I have been having a lot of fun quilting my Modern Farmer's Wife quilt, and I have to say, "I love my Tiara!!!"  Okay, maybe I can calm down now.  ;)

I have so much room for quilting a large quilt with Princess El (short for elephant, because she's huge).  And I set up a lot of tables around me to support the weight of the quilt.  I actually sit in a little U-shaped space. My Koala chair helps a lot because I can set the height for whatever feels good at the moment.

So the first thing I did was try stitching in the ditch with a special ruler (this is the Handi Quilter Versa Tool).

It took way too long and was awkward.  I found that if I put my head really close to the machine that I could see well and stitch in the ditch pretty straight.

It went much faster, but it still took two hours, 1 large bobbin, and 28,300 stitches to stitch in the ditch around all the sashing and cornerstones.

After I stabilized the quilt, I used my Pfaff to zig zag around all the edges.

Then I quilted the sashing and cornerstones with wiggles and X's.

Half of the X was formed when quilting the rows, and the other half when quilting the columns.  This special ruler helped a lot.

Once the X was quilted, I used the Versa Tool to quilt a dogwood flower.

(The little black knob is part of my stitch regulator.  I always keep a finger or two on it while quilting.  Thanks go to Cheetah for taking the the two pictures above.)

I love how the cornerstones look with the sashing.

It took 4, hours, 2.5 bobbins, and 81,400 stitches to quilt all the sashing and cornerstones.

I decided to quilt each block individually using similar designs including:

Orange peel quilting...

More dogwood quilting with the Versa Tool...

Loops...

Straight lines...

and any other combination.  ;)

When I needed a break from the quilting over the weekend, I did the handwork on the binding.  I figured if the edges were all quilted it wouldn't matter if I added the binding before the entire quilt was quilted.  (You can see my binding clips in the upper right hand corner of the picture.)

After 14 hours, 6 more bobbins, and another 118,900 stitches the quilting was finished.  All in all, it took 20 hours, 9.5 bobbins, and 228,600 stitches to quilt this.  That is the longest I have ever spent machine quilting one quilt!  (Although a lot less than the 200+ hours I spent hand quilting a similar sized quilt.)


Here is a sneak peek at the finished quilt.  I am waiting for some better weather and (hopefully) sunshine to take some nice pictures.

Now I want to redecorate my bedroom to match this bright, cheerful quilt.  Hubby has agreed to paint!  :D

Click on the Modernizing the Farmer's Wife Quilt link to go to the introductory post.  It includes links to all of the episodes sharing my ideas for ways to modernize the Farmer's Wife Quilt.  I have included the sizes to rotary cut the enlarged blocks in case anyone else wants to make a modernized farmer's wife quilt similar to mine.

XX,
Jasmine

P.S.  I am linking up with Let's Bee Social and Needle and Thread Thursday.