I received the batting in the mail yesterday for my quilt.  I decided to use wool again so it’ll be a warm and cozy throw for the winter.  (The quilt is a gift for my SIL.)  Anyway, I felt like death yesterday at the peak of a rather nasty cold, but I’m feeling a bit better today, so I got the quilt basted and started quilting.

On a side note, by far my least favorite steps of quilting are marking the quilt and basting.  I like cutting and piecing (machine sewing) the best.  Quilting is challenging and can be annoying, but I like the challenge, and I like the result.  I also enjoy hand sewing the binding.  But crawling around on my knees basting – so annoying!

Anyway, it is very slow going.  It is awkward maneuvering the giant quilt around my fairly small sewing machine.  I’m using my walking foot on a quilt for the first time.  I tried it on many practice quilt sandwiches for the spiral quilt, but in the end I decided to free motion quilt that one.  (I think that was the right decision.)  It’s not hard doing the straight line quilting for this quilt, but it is very, very slow.  I want to have this in the mail no later than Monday 12/22, and Friday would be far preferable from a shipping cost perspective.  That’s going to be a tall order.

What’s a quilt post without pictures?  Oh well.

On a side note, I got the fabric for my next quilt from fabric.com today.  I’d hoped to use that fabric to make the Christmas quilt, but fabric.com’s shipping and handling is mind-bogglingly slow.  Despite an “early” delivery by UPS, it took them two full weeks to get me my order.  My next quilt is going to be very green: