I always thought quilting was fun. A bit of frustration here as I practice following a line. Who knew that quilting with a longarm could be so difficult. Actually, it was probably more difficult on this piece because I used blue chalk with my new pounce pad and the chalk kept bouncing off! Now my limited experience with this tells me that if I had swiped over a stencil, I wouldn't have had that problem. But I made my own stencil from used x-ray film and stitching without a needle to mark the line with holes for the chalk. The chalk had no trouble passing through the needle holes. But it just sat on top of the fabric, so it bounced off when the hopping foot approached. Without a clear line my quilting looks like a little kid did it. So I guess I made the right choice with the batting. Or rather with drying it in the dryer. I used a scrap of cotton batting that was obviously not preshrunk. I say I made the right choice because all them puckers hide the poor stitching pretty well. ;-)
Typically I don't wash a quilt right after quilting it, but I couldn't get the blue chalk out. First I used a mini vacuum to suck out the loose chalk. ThenI took it outside to my hubbys dirty garage and used the aircompresser. Glad it was just a small practice piece. The blue was still pretty dark. No regrets here. Shrinking it was a great reminder to expect the same thing to happen if I don't preshrink my batts or if I dry the quilt in the dryer. Oh, and FYI the 36" x 46" quilt is now 33" x 42".
I'd like to hear from you about your experiences with cotton batting. Have you found one that doesn't shrink much in the dryer?
May all your quilting be beautiful. Sew long.
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