Quilting has Begun!!

 I'm not going to lie, shortly after I decided to quilt this rather large quilt top myself I had a huge "what the heck was I thinking?!" moment 😳.  Just spray basting alone was a huge undertaking...my knees still hurt from kneeling on the floor.  This is the largest quilt I've ever made...I'm used to making lap or baby size quilts.  But once I got over my initial fear of "omg...I'm going to ruin this quilt" 😂, I realized even though it would be a challenge, I could totally do it.  

I decided to straight line quilt a 1/4 inch from each seam...there are a lot of seams!  😲  But my trusty Baby Lock just kept chugging along and before I knew it, I had half the quilt done.  The throat space on my machine isn't super wide, so it's been a bit of a challenge squishing all that fabric through my machine.  But it's doable.  So far there's only been one minor set back...I was almost to the end of a row when my bobbin thread ran out...I had to unpick that row and start over.  Other than that, it's been pretty smooth sailing and once I got into the flow, I started to enjoy myself a lot more.  

I'm also backing this quilt with flannel, which I've never done before.  So I was nervous about how my machine would handle quilting with flannel.  But I didn't have any issues.  I did find that increasing my stitch length to 4 (instead of my normal 3.5) seemed to result in more even stitches and I used a combination of a tall dining room chair and my knee to hold up the weight of the fabric so it didn't drag as I was quilting.  This helped tremendously as it's SUPER heavy!! 

I hope the rest of the quilting goes just as smoothly.  Honestly, the spray basting was the worst part.  There were definitely a few (ok, a lot) not so nice words said throughout the basting process.  😂

And check out this super cute flannel that I 'm using for the back!  It's Snow Globes by Cotton + Steel.  I always love their prints, but this is probably one of my favorites! 

Wish me luck as I finish this quilt!  I'm trying not to think about the fact that I have another top waiting to be quilted as soon as I finish this one.  😁