UFO Sunday #4

I think today will be my last UFO Sunday because after today, my Floating Dresdens quilt will just be a regular work in progress.

I got lots of good advice last week about how to quilt my big quilt, but the advice I decided to take came from the author of the Mariner's Compass Quilting Project, who suggested dividing the quilt into parts and quilting one part at a time.

So this evening I grabbed a blue fabric pencil and (after testing it on a scrap to make sure it would wash out - what a nightmare that would be if it didn't!) marked out the lines for my quilt...the flowing lines I wanted, going from one corner to the other.

I also made the decision not to quilt the lines through the circles, and instead to quilt the circles by stitching around the perimeter.  This broke up the longest diagonal lines into little segments that ran between the circles.  Not too intimidating at all.

This evening I started quilting around the circles like Leah recommended, and it was a pretty low-stress way to put the first few stitches into a quilt that had been intimidating me for a while.  I'm still pretty new to using my Singer 115 treadle machine, but it performed beautifully and I have no concerns about finishing the quilt with it.

Now that I have some stitches in it's no longer a scary project lurking in the back of my craft space.  Instead it's a quilt that I'm eager to finish and see my kids snuggling under.