55 Yards of Quilting

I recently finished quilting my Elephant Pillow Quilt.  It was the first quilting I've done on my new machine which has a very large armhole.

The quilt is a long rectangle (51" by 74") because it's going to drape over a chair, covering nearly to the floor in the front and back.  On my old machine, I would have done the stitching parallel to the long side, because that would be less bulk in the armhole.

But with the new machine, I decided to do the stitching parallel to the short edge, just so I could glory in all the roominess I had.  It was glorious all right.  Lots and lots of room; no drag.  Part of the reason for no drag is the 16" x 24" table that came with the machine.

While doing all the rows of stitching, I needed something to think about.  I wondered how many inches of stitching I was doing, and how many it would have been had I gone in the other (portrait mode) direction.  So when I got all done, I did some calculations.  I did 1,989 inches of quilting, which equals 55.25 yards.  Sewing on the long direction would have been 1,850" or 51.3 yards.  So it took me a little longer than it could have.  I wonder how I would have spent those extra minutes?  Probably shopping.

This is the elephant side of the quilt, which I made much larger than the other side, so technically it's the back.  But this side wasn't visible when I was quilting.  The flip side is made up of nice regular rectangular blocks, just begging for parallel rows with the quilting bar.

I worried about how straight I made my sandwich.  An off-kilter top would have been annoying because then the stitching lines wouldn't be parallel to the seams on the elephant side of the quilt.   I was happy with the way it turned out.

I also wondered if the appliqued elephants would look bad with parallel lines of stitching running through them.  They look fine - you can barely see the lines through the patterned fabric, yet they stand out nicely on the solids.

Look how nice and straight that line of stitching through the bottom of the feet came out.  Good Janet.  Now I'm wondering if when I made the sandwich, I measured to make sure the top was equidistant from the edges of the back.  That makes more sense than serendipity.  But since this quilt is taking FOREVER and I made the sandwich weeks ago, I really can't remember.

It's already bound, and all I have to do is finish sewing on the label.  Surely I can finish that by the end of the weekend.

I blame the long time it took to make this quilt on my new machine.  I was really nervous about using it, and I had to figure out how to do the simplest things once I got home and forgot what they showed me about threading, etc.  Putting on the special dual-feed foot and then adding an adapter and a quilting bar was an adventure.  I had to go back to the store for that one.

So far I only had one problem and that was when I was machine stitching the binding.  I picked a stitch that did automatic locking when you first start sewing.  Except that they give you two versions: one with the needle in the center position and one with it shifted to the left.  Coming out of a night with short sleep, I naturally picked the left-justified one.  Only problem was that my foot had a teeny hole for the needle to go through, and it only works when the needle is centered.

The bad news is I now have a dent in the foot.  The good news is I learned how to put in a new needle.  I worried that I might have hurt the motor or something because I didn't immediately realize what the problem was and I kept my foot on the pedal amidst a bunch of racket.  But when I called the store, the woman that answered said she had done the same thing and it should be fine.  Should be.