The Great Machine Quilting Adventure (and grey yarn update)

We pickup this story from when  the Double Irish Chain quilt was ready to baste together.  I had purchased an obscenely expensive tin of spray basting adhesive.   I lined the diningroom in old newspapers in order to protect the furniture and flooring.   I spent a couple of days trying to research the ventilation requirements and possible health issues with the spray.   I didn't find anything screaming out at me.  Finally, I got up the guts to spread out the bamboo batting, spray it and apply the quilt backing.   I was totally amazed.  There was no obvious odor, virtually no excessive spraying and the fabric was easy to reposition on the batting and still held tight when patted back down.  I flipped the batting, sprayed and put the quilt top on.  To my horror.. no really, exasperation, there were a couple of wonky bits on the border which I couldn't smooth out for anything.  I let it sit for a day or two while I tried to figure out a suitable solution.  In the end, there was only one.  I peeled the quilt top off, setting the batting carefully aside as I'd heard that the sprayed bits can stick to themselves quite nicely.   I ripped that quilt top apart, resewed a few blocks, reassembled the top, squared it up properly, remeasured the borders, trimmed them up and sewed them back on.

   In all, it only took a good part of a day to get back to basting.   When I plunked that quilt top on the batting, the original light spray of adhesive still held!   I was impressed, but I wanted to be certain, so I peeled back various corners and gave the batting the lightest of quick sprays anyway.  That poor quilt sat on the dining room table for several more days while I tried to figure out what to do with quilting and fiddled with the treadles tension, which seemed to not want to be happy doing free-motion work on my samples.   In the end, although I did get the tension worked out, I decided to do the centre part in diagonal straight machine quilting.


I was ready to mark it and go.  Then last night, as I wandered past the quilt, the light hit it in a certain way and I knew exactly how to quilt it.. not plain straight line diagonals, but some of them will be interlaced and some not.    This morning I started marking the quilt out and this afternoon, I started quilting.    I need to reconfigure the work space to give the quilt a little more support but otherwise the treadle is working beautifully for the quilting.  There are a few wobbly bits of quilting here and there but it's getting better and I'm sure by the time I've finished machine quilting the next quilt, I'll be loads better.   I'm not sure I like the blue quilting thread on the beige blocks, but I think I'd dislike a lighter thread on the blue blocks more, so not much to do about that.   

Grey wool update -   Yep, the 1 lb of grey roving is spun, plied and waiting for a project.  I've been spinning stashed roving lately, to get some of it used up.   I think I'm down to almost needing more roving, so mission accomplished there.  However, now I have an interesting assortment of skeins to use up!   If I'd thought ahead for this grey, I might have kept the grey as singles.  Half way through the last bobbin, I realized I had a nice amount of similar grist singles stashed away, which may very well have worked as weft with the grey as warp.  None the less, it is spun and worked up quite nicely.   Next time, I'll have to remind myself to actually write down the yardage after I count it though.  Not sure why I bothered to work it out, if I wasn't going to write it down.. sigh..

Knitting and piecing and knitting and sewing and.........

 The mittens are done!  The fleece was a variety of fawn colours from cream to the almost brown, with hints of grey.   Very pretty and the mitts knitted up easily.  The colour varigation is quite pronounced, although not as much as in the photo.    The recipient didn't mind.   It really didn't take that long to knit either.   The ribbing felt like it took the longest time to knit, although I doubt it really did. I loved knitting with that particular skein because it just worked so well.  It was soft, well spun, wasn't splitty or anything else hard to work with.   It just felt right.

Then I started on these.  Yes, I swatched.. I knit my first ribbing based on the swatch and it was too large.   I took away just a couple of stitches and now it's too small.  Obviously I changed my tension in there a couple of times.   I'm going to rip this out and start again, being more careful of my tension or adding a few stitches and keeping the tension at a bit of a tighter gauge.  As well, it's the Clun Forest fleece which I spun with a long draw.  It's very springy. I've noticed when I'm knitting it that it takes much more tension that most of the yarns I use.  I'll have to take that into consideration as well. 

Finally I realized that if I didn't get off my duff, iron the quilt fabrics, start cutting and sewing, I'd not have the Xmas pressie quilt finished in time.   I still may not as I've no idea how long it will take to machine quilt it when I've finished piecing it.   I had to run out and purchase a new quilting ruler, suitable for rotary cutting.  My old one is 15 or so years old and not only was too narrow but getting rather weary and worn.  I was astounded by the cost...$45 for one 8.5 in x 24 in ruler!   Luckily, it was on sale for 1/2 price..   I'm using one of the speed cutting techniques, cutting long strips,sewing them together in the required order, slicing off pieces and stitching them together to make the correct block.   It's saving a lot of time.   I decided upon a Double Irish Chain, which interestingly, one source commented that it's called an American Chain in Ireland.  I wonder if that's true? 

I actually wanted to use white instead of the beige, but the white I had was too stark.  While I think this beige is too pinky, it looks okay.   I'm piecing it on the treadle.  I know it would be faster going on one of the electric machines, but I'm finding the treadling very relaxing and still getting a kick out of powering the machine myself and not running up the electric bill.

More spinning -  More grey -  Looks exactly like this on the wheel.   While I've loved the end result, a whole pound is a lot of wool to spin.  We've had a lot of grey days and I'm just not appreciating the grey wool right now.