Baby quilt completed

A few days ago I wrote about my frustration starting a new machine quilting project. I think it wouldn't be so frustrating if I hadn't had reasonable success quilting the baby quilt for my friend. Again, I had to alter my settings once I got started from what I'd settled on with my test sandwich, but not nearly to the same extent as I'm having to do with this other quilt, which I'm making for my sister. I guess that's where the extra bulk and weight of my sister's quilt makes a difference -- it's about 55" x 80" whereas the baby quilt is about 43" x 55". Each quilt is its own learning experience is the moral to this story.

But as far as the baby quilt goes, it turned out well. Nothing fancy, just simple borders and cornerstones and minimal quilting. I tried a new technique for the binding -- I attached it first to the back, then used a zigzag stitch to finish it on the front. You can see the zigzag on the back, but I'm OK with that. As I've told my friend, this is a quilt that's meant to be used and washed and used some more.

Once it was finished and washed and dried, I was so happy I'd stuck with using quilt shop-quality fabric. It's just so soft. I have a scrap quilt I made a few years ago from fabric I'd purchased from a variety of places, and despite having been washed multiple times it's nowhere near as soft as the baby quilt was after just one time through the washer. If I wasn't a convert to good fabric before, I sure am now.

The only solution is chocolate cake

*sigh* Actually, that should be *SIGH* *GRRRR* *#%@$! crap*

It doesn't matter how much I test the settings on my machine with a little quilt sandwich before preparing to machine quilt. I mean, yeah, the test helps me get a ballpark idea of what's going to work in terms of tension and stitch length. But the real tests, unfortunately, have to wait until the actual bulky quilt is in the machine and I am attempting to do some actual machine quilting. And then it just becomes a game of "will this tension setting work better? No? What about this one?" I feel like I squandered the better part of a perfectly good overlapping nap period ripping out lines of quilting. On my last attempt, the top stitches finally looked good, but the bobbin tension is now far too loose and the back looks terrible.

So rather than use up the last few minutes of quiet ripping out that quilting, I did what any quilter in her right mind would do -- cut a big slice of the store-bought chocolate cake sitting on the counter and went to town. Figuring out what I'm doing wrong with my sewing machine will just have to wait.