Tops Ahoy!

I could have posted a few times during the last few months to document the progress I have made on Allietare, but I didn't. Oh, well.

Here is what Allietare looked like on January 28:

The borders are on!

More recently, I found a block of time I could use for the next couple of steps. Last time I reached this stage I had a bad experience with spray baste. I researched this step further and decided to go with pin basting. I used Warm & Natural Needled Cotton batting. So far, I have been very pleased with the batting, though I haven't washed it yet. I used refrigerator magnet clips to clip the quilt sandwich to a utility table. Then I pinned the sandwich.

My next step was stabilizing the quilt sandwich by stitching in the ditch. It has been a while since I have done that. I started out going crazy fast and had practically no control. I kept having to slow down. I finally remembered that I have a speed control on my machine.

I used my walking foot and and it did a good job. I did not have any bunching this time. I only ran into a safety pin once. 😅

I finished that part today:

I'm having a hard time to deciding how to quilt it. I will be doing some type of free-motion style quilting. I will be using gold/yellow thread. That's all I know.  It almost looks like I could get away without further quilting, but I want to at least quilt the large squares and the large white pieces along the edges. And there is no way to avoid quilting the black border.

I finished the En Provence top on June 15. It's going to sit on the back burner now until Allietare is all done.

Lessons learned:

• Save the spray baste for small projects.
• Don't skimp when pinning.
• SLOW DOWN when stitching in the ditch. 
• Use the speed control, too.