Quilting My Paint Quilt

I'm in the quilting stage of my Paint Quilt. 

I started the stitch-in-the-ditch step yesterday and finished it this morning.  After that, I stitched around the four outer edges of the sandwich, so all the edges of every single one of the 25 squares are firmly stabilized.  Then I took a deep breath.

After looking at all the nice quilting I did on my Climbing Lanterns quilt, I decided to be brave and do something other than the walking-foot straight lines I'd done lately.  I pulled out my copy of Angela Walters' Free Motion Quilting and decided to try her atomic squares.

Of course, my atomic squares are not the same as her atomic squares.  Nevertheless, I'm pleased.  Although my lines aren't straight, the two things I'm happy about are that the length of my stitches are relatively even, and so is the back tension.  Sometimes my back tension gets all loopy, especially when I'm stitching curves or pushing the quilt away from myself.

If I could look down on the entire quilt top, like this, when I'm quilting, it would be much easier to keep the atomic squares the same size, and to keep my lines straight.

But I quilt on a domestic machine that sits on a table, so the quilt drapes down over the arm of the machine, meaning the stitches are lost from view.  

One can always find an excuse for something if one tries hard enough.

I've finished the right-most column, and celebrated by cutting off the batting and backing on the right edge.  That will be a little less bulk to deal with when quilting other columns.  I left it on the bottom, because that won't get in my way.

Each column is 48".  One down, four to go.

This small garden on the corner of my table is keeping me company today, along with the snow and thunder outside.