More on machine quilting today and the second lap quilt that I made. The one was inspired by this YouTube video called Five Ways to Use Ugly Fabric. I was intrigued by the title! She makes a number of suggestions then offers a tutorial for a lap quilt that requires twelve 14″ squares.

Instead of using ugly fabric, I chose fabrics I like from my stash but haven’t used, mostly florals, mostly red and black. The design reminds me of Stained Glass Quilts, but without the black sashing. (Here’s a tutorial on making those. They were really popular about 30 years ago.)

Here’s that “ugly” quilt top, which isn’t very ugly at all. There are twelve squares but they’re a bit tough to pick out. The only horizontal and vertical seams inside the borders are between the blocks. Look for three squares across and four down – each one is broken into 9 pieces.

The one fabric that breaks the rule of red-and-black is that green one with the chrysanthemums. I always loved it but have never used it. Now it’s here forever. Also the paisley one with the cream background technically follows the rules (there’s a bit of black in the outlines) but it’s also a less consistent choice. The styles of the prints are so different that I would never have put them together but it’s kind of fun to have them mixed like this. Two are Kaffe Fassett fabrics that I never used because the scale of them was so big. (One is black with huge red and pink flowers, while the other has a purple vase with long blue sprays of flower stems.) Hmm. That one floral is the only one with a lot of yellow. Maybe there are more outliers than I thought!

This quilt is bigger than the first test quilt – it’s 42″ by 54″ – but still a small quilt.

I did buy backing fabric for it out of the discount bin and had to piece the batting from that last piece of the roll. I’d originally planned to use the black cotton quilting thread, but instead I went looking for Aurifil thread, which is supposed to be the best. I found a wonderful cherry red in that which I couldn’t resist.

I had a plan to do my first free motion quilting on this one, using my Pfaff 360, but that machine needed a bit of TLC first. I did a few rows of quilting on a vintage Elna instead, using a cam from the embroidery stitches, then thought it would be too much to do the whole quilt that way. (Even though it is pretty.) I wanted to change to a straight stitch and the Elna didn’t want to go. (More TLC needed.)

Here’s that decorative cam stitch:

So, it was back to the trusty Singer 185K and the walking foot. As a result, this quilt has wavy lines of quilting, just like the last one, instead of free motion quilting. I still like it. Here it is:

One difference is that I wanted to quilt the borders all around, in an enclosing square instead of quilting from edge to edge. That meant that I had to pull both threads to the same side at either end of each quilting line inside the borders, tie them off, then thread the ends onto a needle and bury them in the quilt. That took some time but wasn’t as tedious as I’d thought. (Hint: leave long ends in future.)

Until my machines get their TLC, I’m foiled as far as learning free motion quilting. I’m going to carry on with the walking foot, though. The lines are kind of fun when they wave and when they aren’t perfectly parallel, they have an organic appearance that will work for some of my quilt tops. There’s still room for improvement in my lines and my stitch length, too, and certainly I need practice supporting the weight of the quilt as I work.

In addition to giving us some picnic quilts for the car, these test pieces have convinced me of one thing: done is better than perfect. I never believed that until now, but all the imperfections that I see when I examine each quilt closely aren’t noticeable when you look at the whole thing. So, I’m going to continue with my quilt tops that need to be finished up, working from smallest to biggest as I get better at moving the weight of the quilt around.

Next up is my Escher quilt. Since it’s all diagonal lines anyway, I’m going to quilt it with chevrons – down from the left side on the diagonal to the middle, then pivot and quilt up to the right side on the diagonal. I haven’t yet decided whether to do that the whole way down, or to invert the chevron halfway down. That would make a big X instead of the Y in the piecing, which might be fun. We’ll see.