Borders and Swirls

Progress is slow, but it's progress.  As of this morning I have finished the walking-foot stitching and the inner border.  Can you see the leaves?  Took me a while to get the hang of it.  I tried spacing them further apart, but it took a life of it's own.  So I just stitched with the flow.

I moved my sewing machine over to my cutting table, which gives me a large surface to work with.  It has helped a lot, especially as I worked with the walking foot.  I didn't need to wrestle with the quilt hanging over the back of my sewing table.

Next up is stitching the checkerboard squares.  I've seen several loose spirals on quilting blogs lately and liked how they looked.  Well.... not on this quilt.  I finished a short string and hated them.  Out they came!  Just as well - the stitch length and bobbin tension were off.  I tried a few ideas with plastic and a dry erase pen before I settled on a tighter spiral.

Oh, much better.  (You can see them faintly through the backing on the right side.)  I paid attention to my movement so the stitch length was better, too.  So many things to keep track of with freemotion quilting!

I find that freemotion quilting a large quilt is easier than stitch-in-the-ditch.  However, I'm amazed at the pressure on my wrists.  The quilt isn't that heavy, but it certainly feels it when trying to move it down the line with nothing but my hands.  I may need to take a lot of breaks to get through all those spirals.

I may jump to the borders next, while I have the blue loaded.  Then the stars and the last of the border.  Broken down, it doesn't seem like that much, but I know there's still hours to go!

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Freemotion by the River - Linky Tuesday
My Quilt Infatuation - Needle and Thread Thursday
Sew Fresh Quilts - Let's Bee Social