Quilting the 1st Layer Builds a Strong Foundation!

I have finish the first layer of quilting the quilt. Whew!!!! It wasn't difficult,just a bit tedious. For those of you who are familiar with my work, I do quite a bit of machine quilting and is very maticulous with the little things that I place on the quilt. I think the most time consuming in this step was the hearts, words and ribbon symbols. The quilt needs some green leaves; the hearts are not enough so for the second layer, I will add some green leaves and maybe some more hearts along with the women figures.

While quilting, I realized that there were some things that I hadn't mentioned or needed to reiderate about the machine quilting process.......and as things come to me, I will mention them in blogs to come.

1. When quilting you must put enough pressure on the foot pedal so that you will get ample enough speed and stitches per inch. If you go to slow, your stitches will seem jerky looking; almost like a person is driving a car  with two feet and the car keeps coming to a hault and moving in a jerking motion. The second thing is, when machine quilting too slow it's not like driving a car, you do not slow down when going around curves. When you want your stitches to make a loop or a circle or outline a curved shape, your bobbin thread will show on top if you are going to slow. 

Pulling up the bobbin thread to the top of the quilt when starting

2. In the picture with the finger (yes it's my finger), I have pulled the bobbin thread up to the top of the quilt because I am starting to quilt. You only do this when you are starting to begin stitching ( at the beginning when you are starting to stitch at any point during the quilt project or if you change the thread color or if you've had to stop sewing because the bobbin thread ran out and you have to start again).If you don't do that, your bobbing thread will work it's way back into the bobbin case and cause all kinds of problems including tangling of the bobbin thread. If the bobbin thread happens to run out, cut a descent length of the top thread and pull it to the back of the quilt project that you are working on by pulling a stitch from the back of the quilt.The will bring the top thread and the end of the bobbin thread to the back. Some quilters work it into the quilt layers once the quilt if finished. I stitch over those threads to lock them in place.....then begin quilting again where I left off.

Note: I took pictures of areas of the completed 1st layer. I wanted you to see how the threads seem to connect to one another. I don't cut the thread every time that I sew an appliqued piece if I am using the same color for each of the appliqued symbols. I just pull a length of thread long enough to move from one symbol on to the next one. Once I finish the whole 1st layer, cut the thread or clean up the area to prepare for layer 2. Well on to the next layer.