Finally Quilting It

The piecing on this has been finished for awhile, but I put off the quilting for several reasons. I had some small projects with deadlines, I've been busy socially and most of all I was terrified to start it.  I've never quilted such a big piece, except for a queen sized bed quilt, in one piece. Usually I piece the quilt top in manageable sections that allow me to do the intense free-motion quilting that I love and then I piece those quilted sections together.  I've done this many times, have been accepted into many shows and even won some ribbons with them. But this piece, 90" x 45" did not lend itself to that technique.  Then I thought I was going to cut it into three pieces after it was pieced and make it a triptych. I had howls of protest when I put that on my blog, so I decided to bite the bullet and quilt it in one piece. 

First I dyed six yards of cotton a soft mottled brown for the background.  I may be obsessive, but I like my backs to coordinate with the fronts.  I was going to go to a friend's house to spray baste it on her ping pong table, but then realized that it would fit on my dining room table if I put in both leaves and the table pads. That worked just fine.  And then I thought, why not do the quilting there too?  My dining room is rarely used, such a waste of space, and the big table would give me lots of support for the big heavy quilt. 

I turned the chairs around on the other side of the table to form a wall for the quilt so that it wouldn't fall off the edge of the table and cause drag while quilting.

My studio is upstairs and is the hottest room in the house in the summer and I have to crank up the AC to be comfortable. but yesterday was a beautiful summer day, not too hot, low humidity and lovely breezes.  I opened the two windows in the dining room and the sliding doors in the kitchen/family room and the breeze blowing thru was delicious.  I almost felt like I was plein air quilting.

I'm doing a lot of free-motion "doodling" in the big spaces. The fact that there are no seams makes it a lot easier.  I'm matching the thread to the fabric; that is gray on the gray and I will do small doodling in the whitish strips.  So far so good! It's a big quilt for me, but not nearly as intimidating as I thought.