Name revealed - no.14

Number 14 has now been bestowed with a name. Yes, I am excited by this because I usually have trouble giving names to my quilts but with the look of it, this one was obvious. But I'm not going to tell you until the end.

So continuing with day two and three, and would you believe it? This quilt got bigger than I expected. I am so into double borders lately but I forget how many inches it adds to the quilt. This required expanding my backing by joining two pieces together and the stripes made it super easy to disguise the seam. I normally use really small patterns for backing but this one the large stripes still worked. I basically matched the two brown stripes and sewed in the middle of the stripe so it looks the same width as the other stripes in the pattern.
I then ironed both front and back and laid them on my lounge floor. Using my pool noodle and quilting spray glue I assembled the quilt. I love this method because I don't have a large table but I can still prevent any puckering.
So in purchasing the fabric for the borders, I also finally bought some quilting safety pins. I have been using large quilting pins to hold my quilt together since I started quilting and I would always get stabbed. Quilting always turned out to be a painful experience, until now. Yes not a single gasp while quilting this one. I am surprised it took me so long to get them.
(Though I had no idea they existed for a while)

For the quilting I used a normal straight stitch and followed a diagonal pattern across the squares skipping the small white squares. I used a blue gradient cotton thread on top and a brown gradient thread on the bottom. The reason behind the choice was that I simply wanted the top thread to stand out and have the bottom thread more muted. Quilting the front panel wasn't all that difficult or long. The extra room on Thor made it far more comfortable than on my old machine. Thor is an amazing machine. It sorts out any potential puckering or problems with ease and I feel that I don't have to put in as much effort to match seams, press fabric flat or anything. It really has simplified the process of making a quilt for me which makes me so happy. You can see my little finger in one of the photos here. It's healing fine but slowly. I'm hoping it'll get better soon.

Now for quilting the border, I am finally going to return to the double needle quilting. My old Pfaff machine could not handle this procedure no matter how many times I tried. They were tension issues mostly so I just gave up on it and quilted in other ways. But now I have Thor which has settings for this specific process. So I gave it a try, with a trial of course, I wasn't about the go straight in on my pretty much perfect (no mistakes yet) quilt. I tried and it worked! I have been waiting to do this for so long. It was one of my lessons when I first learnt how to make quilts. "Quilt it properly" is what I was told. Plus it gives it such a lovely texture and I really miss having that. It is also something I can do myself. One day I might explore having my quilts quilted elsewhere with something fancy but currently I like having my quilts completely made by me. I used a 2.5 millimetre wide double needle and a combination of Polyester and Cotton thread. I wish I hadn't used Polyester because now it might melt under an iron. I don't know that I'll need to iron it but I might iron the quilt with the back facing up to prevent that from happening. I know now for next time. Use cotton thread! All the time!
So anyway the double stitching was so quick I could not believe it. I stitched seven rows on each brown boarder and again there was no puckering and only one problem with the tension. I think Thor needed a rest, but he's very good at letting me know that there is something wrong.
Music I was listening to was a bunch of Hanson EPs as well as Lifehouse "No Name Face", Jewel "Spirit", Tracy Chapman "Collection" and The Corrs "In Blue". I was in a lighter mood while doing this and I really enjoy singing these songs.

This is how the quilting looks on the back of the quilt. It's really nice I think. I barely had to redo any of the stitching which shows how wonderful my machine is. I left the white border completely clean as I think it would have destroyed the effect. The same goes for the small squares on the front. I did test out quilting around the white squares and though it look great on the back, It looked horrible on the front. It drew a lot of attention to it and I really didn't like it. I decided to unpick it and leave it alone because the seams on those areas are not perfect and it just looked bad. Trust me on this.
I am going to leave the binding off this post as I would like to do a tutorial on how I match the two ends cleanly. I cannot remember if I saw it somewhere or if I worked it out myself. But however I learnt it I would like to share it. So the final picture without the boarder is below, let me know your thoughts.
Time for the name of this quilt...

"White Diamonds"

I feel that it is quite obvious as when you look at it there are white diamonds all over it. I don't know why I have trouble with names. I guess cause it's a bit final and I want something that will suit. So that's the name. Let me know what you think.
Tune in for my next post which will be a tutorial on binding.
Thanks for reading.

Miss Mae