Layered & Basted: Another Step Toward a Finish

Getting the parts and pieces of the Blue and the Gray ready for quilting has been my One Monthly Goal for May. 

Backing prepared?  Yes.  The pattern match is not perfect along the seam but I don't believe it will be noticeable after it's quilted, bound, washed, and dried.  In some places the flowers match exactly, in others, not quite so well.   It seems like the stitching (or maybe it was the pinning) was in line, went out of line a little, then back in line. 

Batting chosen?  Yes.  That was a hard choice.  A while ago I bought a wool/poly 80/20 Mountain Mist bat on sale at JoAnn's.  I've been wanting to try wool batting and when I saw this king size bat for $20.00 I thought I should take it home.  Several people said they loved wool batting, not only for quilting (like butter, they said), but also for lightweight warmth.

But I wasn't sure about wool for this quilt.  I imagine quilts from the 1800s as relatively flat -- cotton flat.  And how would wool wash and dry?  You can see that the package describes this batting as machine washable.  Certainly I would wash a quilt with wool in cool water on a gentle cycle, but when I checked the Mountain Mist website there was no sign of "machine washable" noted for this batting.  Which left me with the question of whether it really is machine washable or not.

I searched online to see if anyone else had experience with this particular batting and found that Kate Klein of Village Quilters had horrible shrinkage and lots of wool on the front of the quilt after a wash.  She used shot cotton on the front (and didn't mention wool coming through the back) and also washed in warm water.

I decided against wool for this quilt and will experiment on a smaller quilt to see how it goes.  If any of you have experience with this batting or other wool batting, I would love to hear about it.

I used the trusted Soft 'n' Crafty 80 cotton/ 20 poly that I've been using for a number of years.  It quilts easily, doesn't have too high a loft, washes and dries well, and is warm.  It seems more similar to a Civil War era batting than wool.

Layered and Basted?  Yes.  I forgot to take a photo when it was on the floor so here is part of it draped over the couch.

One of my concerns using a print fabric for a back is that it will end up askew because I didn't get the quilt aligned well enough.  I was oh-so-careful and measured the edge every few inches the whole way down.  We'll see.

Corners marked?  Done.

The pattern makers put rounded corners on their quilt which are very appealing.  I couldn't decide how big a curve to mark so I used a 12" pizza circle and a 9" cake pan to mark both sizes.  I don't have to decide now so I'll consider these two options as I quilt.  Looking at the instructions in the book just now I see that they suggest a 5" diameter plate for a quilt half this size.  Maybe I'll look for a 10" circle.

Thread color chosen?  Yep.  Black thread was too dark for the light fabrics, natural was too light for the grey and dark blue fabrics, so grey thread it is.  Sadly, I don't have any.  I checked at Hobby Lobby (because it's open) but their spools of cotton were big enough for 5 quilts and I doubt I'll want to use grey again.  I usually use Americana which I buy at JoAnn but couldn't find it online.  They're not open yet here (except for order and pick-up) and I don't remember Americana having grey thread.  Then I checked YLI online but they are out of grey just now.  I went to my nearest quilt shop today (after calling yesterday and being told that yes, they had Gutermann 100% cotton hand quilting thread in four different greys) and found that they had one very dark grey and one very light grey hand quilting threads and four greys in regular sewing cotton.  Sigh.  I even check Walmart thinking they might have Coats or some other brand but they had nearly no thread and most of their fabric shelves were empty.  So I'll begin quilting when I can find thread.

All this to say that I completed my One Monthly Goal for May.

Linking to
> One Monthly Goal May Link-up at Elm Street Quilts
> Finished (or not) Friday at Alycia Quilts
> Peacock Party at Wendy's Quilts and More
> Put Your Foot Down at For the love of geese
> Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie's blog

We've had so much rain this week that there's been flooding in our city.  In fact, they put up the flood gates a few days ago.  Roads not far from us looked like streams and rivers.  Our house and street are in good shape -- this time.  I hope things are going well for you!  One of these days (or weeks or months) we'll be safely out and about again.

--Nancy.
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