I Survived! (and I Quilted!)

Hey there!  It's been quiet from me for a bit.  I was single mothering for almost 10 days while all the mature male members of my collection were away to Orlando.  My older sons are very talented Minecraft artists and went (with my husband as chaperone) to Minecon, a Minecraft convention/trade show.  And took in the fun sights of Florida, too!

I stayed home with the younger boys and tried to keep my head above water by quilting late into the night.  Wait, I do that anyways.  Well, it was harder this time!

I finished this:

There are a few things going on in this quilt that I shall comment on.  One, I machine quilted most of it with Aurifil 50 wt, in beige on the bottom (bobbin) and ivory on the top.  Then I hand quilted the "snowballs" around the insides (roughtly 1/4 inch in) with various colours of heavier Aurifil and DMC threads (8 and 12 wts).

You know how when you quilt something different on the border than you do in the middle, there is a reckoning that has to happen between the two motifs where they meet?  Well, my motifs were weird about it.  I did straight lines following the diagonal in the middle and then a cross hatch following the plaid on the border.  Sometimes I ended up sewing over the same lines twice and sometimes I left a blank spot on the back of that border/middle seam line.  It just depended on what my crazy brain was doing and where I thought it made sense to sew.  Well... on the back it looked weird.  So my solution was to go over the whole thing with a thick decorative machine stitch that looks like a blanket stitch.  You can see it in this picture: 

The quilt came out to 54" by 71".   All the fabrics are American Jane, from the lines ABC 123 and School Days.  I should mention that I used an Ikea sheet on the back of this one as well.

And the other thing I did was to attempt some swirly, whirly loops on this quilt here.  Slow, slow going as this one is making me pull my shoulders up to my ears and I need to take frequent breaks to un-knot.   But I'm learning, so "yay!".