Finishes #18 and 19

 Having a stack of basted quilts sure does make it easier to get quilts finished! My stack is going down quickly, so I'm going to have to find some time to baste a few more. I know I won't run out of quilt tops anytime soon, the quilt closet is full of them!

I wanted to try out the walking foot with my new Bernina, so I opted for straight line quilting on this one. For FMQ the 735 does better with poly thread, but I have a lot of cotton thread too, so I used cotton thread for this and it did just fine. I was sure it would do OK when I was using the walking foot. 

One thing I did not like was because I was turning the quilt frequently, I hit the screen several times and changed the setting accidentally. I think next time I use the walking foot on that machine, I'll tape a piece of template plastic over the screen, so if I do hit the screen with the quilt, no settings will change. It's always interesting adjusting to a new sewing machine. 

My stash does not have much in the way of teal or aqua, so I've found this dark teal works well as background for my scrap quilts. Since few of my scraps are this color, it doesn't blend in with most of my scraps. I think the teal makes for a more modern looking scrap quilt too. This quilt just used my 2" cut squares for the four patches, and teal 3.5" cut squares to alternate with them. If you want to make a very scrappy quilt with decent contrast, try a color you don't use much for the background, it might be just the thing. 

This quilt is from a pattern in American Patchwork and Quilting August 2024. It was a flying geese challenge and this was Emily's quilt. I started with a pastel batik jelly roll, and opted for a navy background so the pastels would pop. I liked this pattern so much I cut a second one out at the same time, but that one has a white background, with darker colors for the flying geese. I made the Flying Geese for the second quilt, but it got stalled out there. It's in a project box waiting it's turn. 

You can see I used a really pale backing for this quilt, which made choosing a thread color for quilting a little challenging. I decided to use a variegated thread on top (Fantastico Birthday Cake by Superior Threads in case you were curious) Between the blues and pinks in the thread, the quilting shows but isn't shocking anywhere. In the bobbin I actually used a very light colored thread, not pink but more a pinkish-lavender. I auditioned a light pink first, but the pinkish lavender actually blended in better with the back, and worked with the top thread as well. I thought white would be too stark of a difference in the bobbin, and if I had any tension issues at all would really be shocking on the top with that navy background. I was really happy at how little the bobbin thread shows on the back. It can be hard to choose threads when the top and backing of a quilt are drastically different colors. 

My goal for the year was to finish 24 quilts, only five more to go!