First of Four

I've made progress on the Shady Lanes quilting.  

I picked one pattern to quilt, got through two of the square areas and hated how it felt and looked.  Ripped it all out and started with another design.  I sewed that for a while and thought of yet another design... but was unwilling to rip it out again.  The current pattern is looking better the more I worked on it. 

At this point the colored areas are all quilted:  one design outside of the diamonds and another design inside.  I've starting quilting the black diamonds, which are fighting me.  Initially I was going to use black thread, but I couldn't see what I was doing.  The grey thread I had was lighter than I wanted.  I usually love blue, but nothing auditioned well.  I ended up picking cinnamon, which surprisingly looks better than I anticipated.

I stared with a ruler to do the straight edging, then free-hand the interior.  I struggled with that and wasn't happy with the result.  So I sketched the next section with chalk and followed the lines.  Not perfect, but it flowed better and I'm happy with the results.  It's slow going and I have to take the time to clean the lint off the black then sketch out the pattern on each piece before sewing.  Turns out the bulk of the seams are under the block and I'm having a devil of a time with skipped stitches.  There's a dozen diamonds and I swear these will take longer to quilt than the rest of it.  I'd really like to be done today to bind it before switching to the next Project Quilting challenge, but that may be a tall order to complete.

This was good practice.  I'm pleased that my stitch length has improved and my free motion quilting is more even overall.  The bobbin has been behaving well - the stitches on the back is clean and haven't pulled tight like in the past.  Now I just need inspiration on which quilt top to quilt next!