Machine Quilting

I finished the top for Food Quilt #2 and got it basted.  I am going to quilt it myself as my favorite long-arm quilter is not available right now.  And if she can't do it I may as well be unhappy with my work as pay someone to do a job I will be unhappy with.  Colleen at Sew Little Time Quilting is the absolute BEST long-arm quilter ever.  She does awesome work. Understands what I like and will even free-hand drawings that I give her.

But, anyway, she can't quilt right now so I am going to do it myself.  Setting up the Flynn Frame was a bust as I don't have room so I will do it on my Featherweight. 

Checking the stitch length

Artquiltmaker.com, as I recently mentioned, gave me a gift certificate for New Pieces, a great quilt shop in Berkeley.  One of the goodies I got was "Machine Quilting Made Easy" by Maurine Nobel.  SewCalGal had recommended it on her blog just the day before I went to New Pieces.  Anyway......in e-mailing SewCalGal back and forth we discussed actually doing the exercises in the book in order to improve our free motion quilting.  So, today, in between working on the food quilt, reading and eating (no chocolate tho :(  ) I did the first exercise in the book.  In addition to checking the stitch length and practicing tying off and stitching I did some stars.  I even labeled the practice patch so that in five years when I pull this out I won't have to rack my brain to figure out what it is!  I can see the benefit of this practice.  I am confident now that I will be able to quilt this using straight line quilting.  Will post the results when I finish the quilt.