Ready -

 

 

Today I basted the batting down to the backing fabric - 

 

Stitched the quilt top in place - 

 

And clamped down the front of the batting and quilt top -  

On my Upstairs/Downstairs - Wild Things-

 

 

And I installed the side bungee cords - 

Forgot about them - 

 

This machine has a 15" throat - 

And with this frame I have a 12" deep work space - 

 

The blocks are only 10" - 

 

So I can stitch from the top yellow square of the top block - 

To the bottom black one - which is the top square in the next block -  

But I'm going to limit myself to one block - and do one row at a time -

 

So I'm ready to quilt - 

If I could only decide - 

What I want to quilt - where - LOL -

 

I followed the suggestion of Linda S - Art in Search - 

 

Who said she prints out a copy of the quilt diagram - 

Puts it in a sheet protector - 

Then doodles on it with a dry-erase marker - 

 

And I came up with some possibilities - 

 

#1 - My first thought was to do an "X" in each square - 

But that would require a LOT of passes across one row to hit them all -

And I would need a ruler to get the diagonal lines straight - 

Unless I just "eye-balled" it from one corner to the other - 

 

#2 - Then I thought of  a giant swirly "C" or "e" looking thing - 

But that leaves the corners of the block unquilted - 

And doesn't really "enhance" the patchwork design much - 

#3 - Then I drew back and forth lines - changing direction with each block - 

That seems to be my go-to when I'm doing Free-Motion quilting -

It's not fancy - but it covers the territory pretty well - 

And might not be a bad choice for my first "real" quilt on this frame - 

 

But then BOB thought that it would be nice to have something - 

That would work in those "diamond" areas -

They were just calling for something "diamond-y" - 

 

If I could only think of something - LOL - 

And it would have to be something that I could quilt one row at a time - 

 

So BOB and I tried again -

 

What if I did the back and forth lines on the diagonal? -

So I doodled two rows of that - 

 

The top row is more curvy and would be harder to control - 

The bottom row is straighter and goes through the corners of the squares - 

And it has some "travel" stitching to get from one corner to the other - 

 

But I like it best of all my doodles -

I have a lot of these Upstairs/Downstairs tops to quilt - 

And I need to come up with something -

What do you think? -

 

Any suggestions? - ;))

Talk to you later - gotta go - gotta sew -