Continuous Curve Quilting on the Amish Baby Quilt

Amish Baby 54-40 or Fight with Continuous Curve Quilting

I finished the stipplish quilting throughout the black background areas of my Amish Baby 54-40 or Fight quilt (I say "stipplish" instead of "stippling" because I intentionally mixed in some pointy little horns and flames along with the smooth jigsaw puzzle curves.  The Quilt Police say you're not allowed to put any points or corners in stippling).  I tried to keep my stipplish quilting as open as possible because I don't want this baby quilt to end up too stiff.  With the stippling and ditch quilting completed, I could have declared the quilting finished from a stability standpoint, but I wanted to add some quilting that I could see, and I wanted to try a new-to-me quilting technique.  So I decided to quilt double continuous curves inside the square patches of the quilt.

Theoretically, this should be easy, but the first attempt looked so bad to me that I debated ripping out the quilting. 

First Attempt at Continuous Curves, Without Marking

After leaving the quilt overnight and coming back to what I'd done the next day, I could still see that it didn't look like "professional quilting," but I decided it looked good enough for a beginning effort.  The thing about free-motion quilting is that you need to build the muscle memory for every design you want to quilt, and that takes lots of repetition.  The best, and really the only way I can get better is to quilt a new design all over a quilt.  That's how I learned to quilt the paisley motif on Lars's Drunken Dragons quilt, and that's how I learned to quilt stippling on the school fundraiser quilt.  I'm using quilting thread that is color matched to my fabrics for the continuous curves and the wobbles and inconsistencies that look so glaring under the bright lights of my sewing machine with my nose 2" from the quilt are going to be difficult to discern on the finished quilt, and will add to the handmade character if they are noticed.  The great thing about baby quilts is that, when they are wrapped around an adorable baby, everyone will be so excited about the baby that no one will be scrutinizing my quilt for mistakes!

So I went back to my quilting books and found that Harriet Hargrave's book Heirloom Machine Quilting and Diane Gaudynski's book Guide to Machine Quilting both describe this quilting technique, and they both suggested making little guide dots about 1/4" in from the seam in the center of each side of the square.  That way you have something to aim for when you're trying to quilt that smooth arc. 

Curve Centers Marked with Chalk Dots, Ready to Quilt

Since my fabrics are dark, I made my dots with a white chalk pencil that easily brushed off after quilting.  This did help me to quilt smoother, better continuous curves, but it was annoying to have to fuss with marking all those dots.  Since I have a lot of squares left in the quilt that I want to quilt this way and they are all the same size, I might just make myself a little template to trace around for the rest of them.  Ah, well -- everything is difficult before it becomes easy, right?

I am struggling with the weight and bulk of this quilt, despite the large throat space on my Bernina 750 QE, the Supreme Slider Teflon sheet, and the relatively manageable size of a 54" square baby quilt.  I'm not sure if it's the extra bulk and weight of the Minky or static buildup with the polyester, or what, but I really have to push and "scrub" the quilt to move it under the needle at times and it makes my neck and shoulders sore.  I am really questioning whether I'll be able to quilt my king sized pineapple log cabin when the time comes.

I won't get any more quilting done on the Amish Baby until next week, though, because I'm headed to Atlanta this afternoon for the Sewing & Quilt Expo.  Yippee!  I'm mostly going to take pattern alterations and fitting classes for garment sewing, but I did sign up for a 3-hour hands-on background filler workshop in the Gammill Longarm Studio.  The class description says it is for "Advanced Beginners," so hopefully having spent a total of about 15 minutes playing on a demo longarm machine will be enough preparation for me to get something out of the class.  My primary goal in taking the longarm workshop is to get a feel for what it is like to quilt on a frame with a longarm machine where the quilt is stationary and you move the machine to draw your quilting designs, versus quilting on a domestic sit-down machine where the machine is stationary and you draw your quilting designs by moving the quilt around under the needle.  I don't have unrealistic expectations about mastering longarm quilting in a day, but I should be able to get a better idea of whether that mode of quilting would suit me. 

If any of you will be in Atlanta for the Expo this weekend, I'd love to hear from you!  Have a great weekend and happy stitching.

I'm linking up with Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced, and with Esther's WIPs on Wednesday linky party.  Grab a cup of coffee or whatever gets you going in the morning and check out what everyone else is working on this week!