It didn’t take long to finish the top.
I don’t have a design wall to pin up my quilt. I use the floor, yes a messy floor with the fabrics lying all around. This way I can see if the distribution of colors is working. As the quilt grows I do have to move out to the living room for more space.
Box Cars on the Rails, I think that will be the name of this one. I went outside to photograph in natural light. Hence the shadow of the camera. I have no interest in learning photoshop – I’d rather be sewing, so the shadow stays.
Over at Mama Loves Quilts Nicole gives a very good tutorial on pre-washing and drying cotton batting. Since I like the idea of a smooth quilt with well defined stitches I gave it a try. Of course I also pre-washed the fabrics. I’m hoping that this will take care of the shrinkage so when I wash the whole quilt – there won’t be too many changes.
Assembling the items for basting. One thing that is missing is the masking tape. It’s there, just not in the picture.
There are quite a few quilters out there who have posted about this kind of basting. I’m not sure I like doing this for a large quilt. One of my big problems was that the batting got heavy and pulled away from the wall. So I moved to the grass.
I think I should have tried to smooth the batting out more, I was able to smooth out the top and the backing, but there are some creases in the batting which hopefully won’t be noticeable once the quilting is done.
I try and use as many of the fabrics from the top in the backing, I’m sure you noticed a new fabric that has nothing to do with trains or Mickey Mouse. Yes, that is Spiderman. Aytan is loving everything Spiderman right now. I didn’t want Spiderman on the front, I’m hoping this quilt will last a long time, so I figured, the back is the place for him. That way in five years Aytan can look back and remember what his favorite thing was from when he was four. At the moment he seems more excited about the back, he wanted to take it home, luckily I managed to get it away from him without tears.
Looking good, now onto the quilting itself.
Linking up with WIP Wednesday
Leah
What a great design and such a fun quilt, your grandson is going to love it. I spray baste all the time, but I do it on the dining room table. As long as I extend it I can get it wide enough for the quilt and so far it’s worked really well.
So far the quilting is working well, better than with pins. I guess like everything else, it takes practice.
Really cute. I know what you mean about large quilts, they are a pain to baste. Have you tried Sharon Schamber’s method of using boards? It can actually work quite well on large projects.
I use Sharon’s method of glue basting the binding, I guess I need to go look at her basting tutorial.
Thanks.