Charity Quilt

A few weeks back Melissa talked about the Quilts 4 Kids project. I checked out the website and ordered a kit. It said it would arrive in 4 to 6 weeks. It was here in like 2 days. STRESS.... they expect them returned in 4 weeks fully quilted. So I opened the package and found pre-cut strips and squares along with a nice set of instructions.

So at the first open night, sat down and whipped out the top quilt. No problem. This is Greg trying to hold it on the mini clothesline we have for quilt picture taking. Nice day but very windy.

Now's the part that's stressed me for the past week. It says in the instructions that these must be quilted WITH LOTS OF QUILTING. So I'm thinking, well what exactly does that mean? If I stitch in the ditch - is that enough? or does it need more? So I kept reading bits and pieces over at Leah's blog on how to do these filler stitches and finally got the part where she says for a bed quilt do about every 2 inches or so. Okay. I can do that. I had all these ideas and I played with different patterns and feet. And just freaked myself out more because here's this pretty little quilt that some kids counting on and I'm about to mess it all up. So tonight = I just sat down with the attitude, I'm doing this and it will turn out however.

Top side looks okay. I attempted to do a swirl in the yellow squares to match the mice tails ... and Greg was kind enough to rip it out with it went HORRIBLY HORRIBLY wrong. I just don't have the darning foot down. I did stitch the ditch in both directions around the blocks with my walking foot. Did a wiggle stitch on the diagonal and in the rainbow border with the embroidery foot. Did an edging on both sides of the black border. The back is tucked and puckered where I crossed my walking foot straight lines. The wiggle lines smoothed out okay. From a distance has this cool wiggly diamond pattern. I really think I'm missing a step in this process. I hope to find a local class soon on quilting with a regular sewing machine. Greg has promised me that it will look better after a couple of washings. I'm not so sure. I'm a little embarrassed to send it off and I'm sure I'm going to be blacklisted.