Donation quilt

I'm really pleased with how this quilt came out. I just finished sewing on the binding last night. I started making this quilt along with a bunch of bloggers on Martin Luther King's Birthday. I interrupted making another quilt that I was very enthusiastic about. Luckily, I still am feeling like working on that one.

Now, about the quilting. If you study the photo you will see little sewn diamonds on the quilt. That's machine tying! If you have been reading my blog, you will have noticed that I've been experimenting with different ways to tie a quilt. Now, my sewing machine is a Viking Platinum 750. I got it about two years ago, so the model may be out-of-date already. Anyhow, in the machine handbook (yes, I do read that sometimes) it mentioned that you could tie a quilt by using a certain setting on the machine. And I'd never even tried it. So, I got a bit of batting and some scraps and tried it out. Lo and behold, it worked fine. If your machine will do this, I have a couple of hints. First of all, the quilt I made is about 44x50 inches. So it's not too big to wrestle under the machine. And I used an ordinary polyester batting. That made it puffy. I sewed across the quilt each time, and went from spot to spot for my stitching, which I eyeballed at about 2 or 3 inches apart. After getting across the quilt, I would take the time to snip the threads between the stitches, because I didn't want to save all that snipping for the end. Besides, it helped to keep the quilt flat for the next row of stitches. Another hint I have is to keep your foot off the pedal between the stitches, it's sew, foot off, sew. I broke a needle learning that. And keep your eye on the needle. The stitch has to be exactly completed each time, and I broke a needle getting that. But after I learned, no more broken needles.