Mission Impossible: COMPLETED, With Five Days to Spare!

Ta-DONE: Mission Impossible, 68 x 90

Hello, Lovelies!  Happy Monday and Happy June to all of you!  I am happy to report that I DID complete the quilting on Lars's graduation quilt, Mission Impossible, in time for the church staff meeting last Tuesday!

Off the Frame!  Mission Impossible Quilting Completed, Ready to Trim

Memorial Day was my birthday, and I "celebrated" by spending 7 1/2 hours at the longarm machine in order to finish all of the SID (Stitch in the Ditch) around the flying geese so I could take the quilt off the frame before I went to bed.  

I had considered all sorts of options for jazzing up the flying geese triangles with additional quilting, but ultimately the calendar and looming deadline won out.  With all of the ruler work quilting that I did in the purple background plus just stitching in the ditches of the flying geese, the total quilting time for Mission Impossible clocked in at just over 45 hours -- plus the 8 or 9 hours that I spent marking the background design before loading the quilt on the frame.  Realistically, there just was not time to attempt embellishing the flying geese with additional quilting.

Boring But Time-Consuming Stitch In the Ditch Quilting

I used Superior's Monopoly invisible monofilament thread in Smoke for the SID (with a gray MagnaGlide prewound in the bobbin), and it was a wise choice.  Although the clear monofilament thread stood out and looked super shiny and obvious against my fabrics, the Smoke thread just melted into each fabric as if I'd changed threads to match each and every fabric.  SID is much more challenging on a longarm machine than it is on a domestic machine, in my experience, and I can assure you that I had plenty of wobbles and oopses along the way.  With the monofilament thread, those growing pains or whatever you want to call them really are invisible enough that I did not have to stop and rip out ANY of my SID quilting.  Also, if you look carefully in the photo above, you can see that my stitch regulator is performing erratically, making the 12-15 SPI (stitches per inch) that I've set it to in some directions and then making TINY little stitches when I move the machine in a different direction.  That's an issue I need to trouble-shoot with the awesome folks at APQS Tech Support, but I didn't want to go off on that tangent until I got Lars's quilt finished and off my frame.  That discrepancy in stitch length would have been really obvious if I'd attempted additional decorative quilting in a contrasting thread color.

So I picked the quilt up from church after the Tuesday morning staff meeting concluded and brought it home to work on the label and the binding.

Machine Embroidered Quilt Label for Mission Impossible

The label took me a day and a half; it's not "instantaneous" just because it's machine embroidered.  I designed the label in my Bernina v8 Designer Plus embroidery software on my iMac computer, which lets me lay out the lettering and position the text exactly the way I want it and preview it in an endless variety of fonts...  I went through a lot of options before settling on the two fonts you see in the photo above.  Then I spend time deciding which fabric and thread colors to use for the label, which stabilizers, sew out a sample, and then go back to my software to make adjustments before sewing out the design "for real."  To save myself some of that time and trouble for next time, here are the most common things that usually need to get tweaked after the first sample is stitched:

Rebecca's Best Practices for Machine Embroidered Quilt Labels:

• Increase the spacing between the letters.  When the fonts are shrunk down to the size of a quilt label, the letters are almost always too close together and difficult to read.
• Set the fabric type to "Lightweight Woven" in the design settings.  This lets the software automatically adjust pull compensation for my lightweight quilting cotton fabric.
• At the sewing machine, lower the upper thread tension to 1.5.  Otherwise the bobbin thread gets pulled to the top side with these skinny little satin stitched letters
• Reduce the embroidery speed at the machine 
• Use a water-soluble topping, one layer of tearaway in the hoop (I'm currently loving Floriani Stitch 'N' Wash for quilt labels because a lot of what doesn't tear away will soften and dissolve in the wash), and another layer of tearaway floated beneath the hoop
• Engage the hoop basting feature in my Bernina machine to secure all layers of fabric and stabilizers around the perimeter of the hoop before stitching out the design

Label is On, and Now For the Binding!

I put the final hand stitches in the binding around midnight on the evening of June 1st.  I'm counting that as "finished by the end of May" for last month's One Monthly Goal.  However, against my better judgement, I decided to run the finished quilt through the wash before going to bed so it would be REALLY finished...  

Now, there was never any question about whether this quilt would ever get washed.  It's a bed quilt for an eighteen-year-old boy's college dorm, for Pete's sake.  And I went through 3 or 4 cans of spray starch throughout its construction and made liberal use of Roxanne's Glue Baste-It washable glue to streamline the curved piecing, AND I marked the entire quilting design onto the quilt top with 3 or 4 different kinds of marking pen...  This quilt was always intended to be washable, and it would not have been 100% "finished" until I washed out all of the starch, glue, and pen marks.  

I tested each and every one of the Kona Solid fabrics used in the quilt top to ensure their dyes wouldn't bleed before I started the quilt, and I tested a swatch of the Spoonflower backing fabric as well.  Every one of those fabrics passed with flying colors.  I didn't notice anything when I pulled the wet quilt out of the washer at 1 AM and transferred it to the dryer.  But in the light of morning, I could see that my yellows were all dingy and there were dark blue streaks on some of them.   I couldn't even bring myself to take a picture of it; it was just too disheartening.  I had to just deal with it, RIGHT AWAY.

SO...  I looked up Vicki Welsh's Save My Bleeding Quilt tutorial, since her instructions saved me when I had bleeding red dye on my Jingle quilt blocks.  With Vicki's method, you don't need any expensive, difficult to obtain or toxic chemicals; just a big bathtub full of water and ordinary Dawn dishwashing liquid.

This Is What the Water Looked Like After Soaking My Quilt for Four Hours

Check out how much additional loose dye was released from this quilt AFTER that first run through the washing machine.  I emptied the tub and filled it with hot, soapy dishwater twice more after this photo was taken, until I could scoop out a glass of the water and confirm that it was clear.  Then the quilt went through several rinse cycles in my laundry machine to remove the Dawn detergent and I dried it again.

Fabrics Faded After Loose Dye Removed

The results?  Well, I'm pretty sure the culprit was the Spoonflower custom printed fabric that I used for the backing, which was printed with black and blue water based inks onto white Kona solid cotton base fabric.  Now that all of the loose dye is gone, the backing is considerably faded, but the fabrics in the quilt top itself have lost some of their vibrancy as well.  I love having the Bible verse printed all over the backing fabric so it's worth it to me in the end, but if I had this to do over again I would have soaked the backing fabric in my tub with the Dawn dish water until all of the extra dye was used BEFORE I loaded it onto my frame and quilted it to my quilt top.  I don't mind the fading of the backing fabric at all -- in fact, removing the excess dye made the backing softer and gave it kind of an appealing denim/chambray vibe.  The folks at Spoonflower did advise me in their care instructions to prewash their fabric before using it in a project, in their defense.  I thought that, if the swatch I dunked in boiling water didn't bleed, I'd be fine -- but perhaps their inks aren't colorfast only start bleeding once a mild laundry detergent is added to the mix?  Could a dye fixative like Synthrapol have helped, if I used it on the Spoonflower fabric before I put that fabric in my quilt?  Who knows -- these are questions for another day.  Because on THIS day, I'm just glad that my quilt is done a whole FIVE DAYS before the Quillow Service at church.  I even get to bring it to Show and Tell at my quilt guild on Wednesday night, to prove that I really am a quilter and not just a government spy infiltrating their meetings...  ;-)

Mission Impossible, 68" x 90"

So this quilt top was 72" x 96" before quilting, and after longarm quilting, machine washing, multiple hot water soaks, and machine washing again, the finished quilt ended up measuring approximately 68" x 90".  That was 6% shrinkage in the width and 7% shrinkage in length, using all unwashed 100% cotton fabrics and Hobbs 80/20 black batting.  Still generously sized to fit one of those 39" x 80" Extra-Long Twin dormitory mattresses, with a 16" drop on all three sides of the bed.

The Sexy Lawn Shot

Fading or no fading, I'm still pretty pleased with how this quilt turned out.  It looks just like my EQ8 design, it's going to fit the college dorm bed, it's done in time for this Sunday's Quillow Service, and it's a soft, snuggly quilt that will keep my son warm in his dorm room this Fall!  I learned a lot making this quilt, got lots of practice with the ruler work quilting, and am happy to report that those needle holes on the backing fabric closed up nicely, the quilt ended up perfectly straight and square, the lettering on the backing fabric was still straight after quilting, and there are NO pleats or tucks in the backing fabric.  Those are enough victories for me to consider this a win.

The Rear View

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.

I'm linking up today's post with:

MONDAY

·      Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com 

·      Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/

·      Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/

TUESDAY

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

WEDNESDAY

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

THURSDAY

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

FRIDAY

·      Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com

·      Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/

·      TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, hosted this week by Lynette at http://whatahootquilts.blogspot.com