Sewing Machine is Overheating!

Not really overheating, but I have used two 250m thread spools and I am halfway through two more, in my race to finish my quilt... I want it done and cleared up before starting with the same focus on the wedding dress. I don't want dark cotton threads caught up in the white silk seams!

I stopped in at "Gone to Pieces", my local quilt s shop to pick up the batting and backing fabric required to finish the quilt. (The front side was made from quilt squares aquired during my Lancaster, Pennsylvania trip in the summer.) Nancy at the shop was helpful and chatty and even had a sale lingering from the post-Christmas clearances! Good deals.

I have the front in nine 20 inch squares, so the plan was to cut the batting and backing to 20 inches, sandwich together and machine stitch in a couple of cool pattern stitches along the blocks in the squares. The size is easy to handle on my machine and I have 8 of the 9 done as I write this (taking a break after four straight hours over the machine this afternoon!). The next step after I finish the last square is to cut 2.5 inch strips of front fabric and back fabric, attach the strips between the 20 inch squares, and place 2 inch batting in the chanel, then top quilt stitch along the strip to hold all the layers together. These will be only 22 inches in from an edge, so a bit of roll of the quilt should allow it to fit on my regular sewing machine. Last step is binding the edge.

I have always made my quilts with a machine for the pieces, but hand-quilted the layers together. I love that look, but it is very time consuming, and my new Janome makes the machine quilting fun and cool.