Abandonment Issues.

Finding UFO

It's been another busy week, I hate to admit it but I am glad the kids are in school again. Those last 2 weeks of summer holiday just get the kids completely wound up no matter how you try to get them to blow off steam, and I get the wonderful job of trying to manage and maintain sanity in my household while I am getting primed for a hug me jacket, oatmeal and a padded room, I guess you could say this Mom appreciates her quiet time ;)

I did however make it to our regularly scheduled Tuesday guild night and got 2 more strips of the quilt I am working on there done. I think I would have gotten the whole thing done but my blue fabric squares and extra blue fabric completely disappeared... I've been searching all of the nooks and crannies around the house and I still haven't turned up anything... I have all the yellow pieces and the red pieces so it doesn't make sense to have the blue go missing.
(/headdesk I think Murphy or Sod has got it out for me lately.)

While I was searching the shelves at the guild to see if my fabric had gotten misplaced through misadventure or accident I discovered this poor, lonely and abandoned teddy bear panel. It was already sandwiched with batting and backing and just needed to be pinned to complete the quilting preparation. 
I have to have a chuckle at myself, I was so offended that someone just left this project unfinished and unwanted to collect dust in a back corner of a shelf. Then I was confused that I was so offended... then amused and well you get the idea ;) 

Anyway back to the story......

I promptly laid claim to the bundle and packed it home to finish up the prep work and then quilt it, this project was begging to be quilted! I couldn't leave it be until it was done. 
First thing I did was I put shaped scraps of batt under the center and under the plaid border with the bears in the corners.  To make centering the batt easier I used washable glue stick on the panel & batting to keep the batt from slipping before I had it pinned. Glue stick is really great, it's much less sticky than something like fusible web or other types of quilter's glue that I've seen. The only problem I had was it didn't want to stick to the extra fluffy poly batt I had.  It does work well on thin poly and natural batts. 

The backing fabric that came with the bundle is great to work with even though it is a cotton/poly blend. I was a little shy of it at first since I've heard and read about the pains of trying to quilt anything other than cottons. 
I did not have any problem at all it moved well under my machine, I had less in the way of nesting and puckering than I usually do. I don't know if it was the fabric or if I am just getting better.... :D

It's finished already.. took me just a few hours to complete, this project was literally begging me to finish it, to the point where I left housework undone so I could get it done. I also had to throw another monkey wrench into the works, I quilted it with Wonderfil 100% egyptian cotton variegated thread, of course I didn't take a picture but you can find it here I used Serenade (TU09). 

 All I can say is WOW, I was blown away by this thread, it was so easy to handle and to quilt with (at $9 a spool it better have been!). Definitely not what I was expecting, the only problem I felt with that particular type of thread is it didn't have the same sort of 'bounce' and give that I find I have with poly threads, I bent 2 needles out of shape, as a matter of fact, because of that difference.

You can see that I outlined all the shapes where I had double batted to really make it stand out and then quilted the white and the denim edges using loopy line and mixed in hearts. (Quilt along #29.. I just had to try it).

The really interesting thing that happened was with the back, the outline ended up looking like a constellation in the stars. How cool is that!

Hopefully I can get it bound on Tuesday, I don't have a big enough table at home to square it up so I have to wait for a guild day.