Batting, Basting and Swirly Circles

I wanted to share how to join batting together. I always have a lot of odd sized pieces left over, and this way I don't waste them. I use my stitch 11 above, a zig zag that stitches across the zig and the zag. Just place your pieces close together and zig zag join them.

The result looks like the picture above. This stitch joins them very smoothly.

And here's a look at my basted quilt.

I'm quilting my circles with swirls. I love making these swirls, it's so much fun. I'm also going to add wiggly lines on the diagonal. I hope to have the quilting finished this evening.

Basting Complete

I started basting this quilt over the weekend and finished it last night. Basting is a bit of a workout, and I always break a few finger nails before completion. I can't wait to start quilting on my new Janome. I have my second class tomorrow morning for getting to know my machine. I think I'll wait until after that to start this one. At my class last week I learned an interesting tip - when you change your thread, you should always cut it at the top and pull it through the machine the way that it's threaded. They said to never pull it back through the machine because this will clog up your machine with dust. I never heard that before, but will be sure to do that in the future.

Basting My Quilt

I started basting my quilt earlier in the week. Here's the shot of the back being pinned to the batting. Then I flip it and pin the top to the batting and back. I found this method works better than trying to pin all 3 at once.

And here was my setback earlier in the week. While I was on the phone Troy decide to "go sew". He found the scissors and cut up one of my back blocks. He sat in time out for awhile. I've also put the gate up going into the Rose Room for now to try and prevent this behavior.