Early Monday morning I received a phone call from my quilty sister – she needed a baby girl quilt, STAT! Even though she is the only other person in my family who quilts, her life is so crazy that she hasn’t been able to sew barely a stitch since last August. Being the fantastic sister that I am ( 🙂 ) I said no problem.

Then she said, “btw, I need it in 13 days and I want you to do a white wholecloth quilt with that free motion stuff you do.” Hmm, now it just got a whole lot more interesting!

So I pressed a piece of Kona White, dug out some Quilter’s Dream Select white batting, and went to the store to find some Minky because a baby quilt needs that deliciously soft Minky, right? I have never used it before but this gave me the perfect opportunity.

This is a progress pic:

Before I started, I sketched out a design I thought I could work with. I have only experimented with this type of free-flow quilting one time so I thought a sketched plan would be helpful.

I practiced on a quilt sandwich before I started so I could test the tension. This is also the first time I have used Bottom Line from Superior Threads so I wasn’t sure about it. I have to say it is quilting beautifully! But I digress…. When I started on the practice piece the design just seemed to flow. At that moment I scrapped the sketch and decided to just go for it.

I chose to use just a few elements that all have curves – hearts, spirals, feathers, leaves – and fill around them with pebbles.  I am trying to make sure the elements are spaced evenly throughout. For example, I don’t want an area that has too many pebbles or spirals, etc.

I am also using my stitch regulator, but only on the bigger elements. I’m in manual mode for the pebbles, that just seems to work better for me. There’s a jerkiness to the needle movement if I try to make pebbles in regulated mode.

I am using Superior’s So Fine 50# in Pastel Pink to give a bit of subtle color to the top and I absolutely love the way it looks.  It gives just enough color to know it is there, but not enough for any stitching wobbles to be super noticeable.

For some reason, I was suprised to see all the texture of the stitching in the Minky. I guess I thought it would be hidden more? I don’t know why I thought that but I’m really happy with the way the texture shows:

I only have two of the corners left to quilt and then I can trim and bind. I don’t know what I’ll use for binding yet – any ideas? I’m leaning toward a light gray, but I’m not sure. I need to dig through my stash to see if I have something “just right.” If not, I’ll be making another trip to the quilt shop.  They are always so happy to see us quilters walk in, right? 🙂

Linking up with Let’s Bee Social and Needle & Thread Thursday.