Journal Notes

July 27, 2025: This will be for my oldest grandson, Jonah. I told him I’d make him a quilt for his bed for his 13th birthday. This is the pattern he chose so I’m going to give it a shot. His birthday is August 2nd so this will be late. This is only the 2nd quilt pattern I have ever purchased and the first time I’ve tried to follow an FPP pattern written by someone else. I had to buy some new Kona colors for this. A few were out of stock so I’ll have to use fabric from my stash that is as close as I can get. I got the pages all printed out. Holy cow, this is confusing. There are 174 pages in no apparent order. Most of the sections have to be cut out and put together with glue stick but they don’t go together the way you think they will. It’s going to be quite an accomplishment just to get all my pattern pieces glued together in the correct order. I’m wondering if all FPP patterns are like this or if this was just poorly written. I admit I do kinda like the challenge though. It’s a big puzzle. I’m just scared it won’t all fit together in the end. 7/28/25: still glueing pattern pieces together. This process is taking more hours than I care to count. I keep finding errors in the pattern, like glue edges that weren’t labeled and even one piece where the wrong side was labeled. Pretty frustrating for someone who is still trying to figure out what they’re doing. I don’t think I’ll ever purchase another pattern from this person. I’m wasting a lot of time on trying to decipher errors. She must not have used testers. 7/29/25: finally finished prepping my pattern pieces! Had a really hard time with section Z. Had to cut it apart and redo it. So many of the registration marks are so far off that i keep doubting if I really have it together right but that has been an issue with a lot of the pattern. Accurate marks would have made this a lot easier. I have been starching some of my fabrics while working on the papers. Looking forward to being able to start sewing tomorrow! 7/30/25: got 3 sections done today. Did the 2 big background sections and one small one. What a challenge to wrangle such huge pieces with paper attached! I’m used to working small so this is quite a change for me. 8/16/25: mountain is done! I’m adding borders because I don’t think it’s big enough to drape over the sides of a queen size bed very well. This was not a good pattern to do as a queen size quilt. I had to machine baste around the edge of each section to keep the paper in place. Sewing the big units together was a pain, literally! From all the wrestling of the pieces, by the time I got to that point, the paper had torn away from all the outer edges and i had to baste them again. I had to use tons of pins to hold the paper in place long enough to get it basted. I stabbed/scratched myself so many times. Unfortunately it’s been hot so I was wearing shorts and got my legs too. I did all the piecing with Bottom Line thread. Had trouble with the top thread shredding above the needle occasionally. I need to try a size 10 needle next time instead of 12 and see if that helps. I was a bit too aggressive tearing the papers out. In many places the thread is loose on the back from my tugging. Hopefully the quilting prevents those stitches from coming out! I tried using my water pen to wet the seams but the highlighter pen marks I had used to show the edges of the sections bled into the white fabric. I seem to have gotten it out by dabbing with a wet washcloth, but what a moment of panic that was! This pattern looks really cool hanging on the wall when viewed from a distance, but on the bed you hardly even know what you’re looking at. It’s more suitable for a wall hanging, but this is what my grandson picked out. Last night I printed out a little picture of a soaring eagle and traced it onto the quilt top using my art projector. He should be fun to quilt. I’ve never quilted anything with this much negative space before and I am intimidated by it. Also, the big awkward shaped pieces of the mountains are going to be challenging. I’m not even sure how to load this on my frame. It almost needs to be loaded diagonally. With all those bias cut pieces I’m thinking maybe I need to baste the whole thing before I start. 😕 I sewed the border pieces on with the Juki speed cranked up to 900 and had no problem with thread shredding, so I guess that was caused by the paper. I used my two rolling nightstands to create an L shaped desk top around my Juki while sewing the borders on. It helped a lot to get the weight of the quilt top off the floor. Should have done that earlier! 8/19/25: after trouble shooting with my machine for about an hour I finally got started on the quilting. Figured out that the encoder cord was getting caught in the wheel and was causing skipped stitches every time I got to about 2” from the back bar of the frame. Got the top border done in a simple piano key. No threads to bury with this design as you start and stop off the edge of the quilt. Been searching online for examples of landscape quilts for ideas on how to quilt this. I should have been looking at Caryl Breyer Fallert Gentry’s site, bryerpatch.com. She has many wonderful examples with details of the quilting. I want to be her when I grow up! I need to remember to go to her site first any time I’m looking for fmq ideas for a non traditional quilt. 9/7/25: I am so happy! I’ve finally found a MACHINE BINDING method that I’m happy with! I followed the instructions in Kara Sommer’s “machine quilt binding” video and this turned out to be the best machine binding I’ve ever done! No glue, no starch, no pressing other than just pressing the binding in half at the beginning. She has you cut your binding at 2 1/2” wide, then sew to the front at right between 1/4” and 3/8” (5/16”). I moved my painter’s tape ledge to that distance. Then you sew the binding down on the back. She uses the left edge (I may try that next time) of the binding as her guide but I moved my tape over a bit and lined up the tape ledge along the number 1 on the “1/4” mark on my needle plate. I basted the binding at 3 different distances before landing on this sweet spot. I just kept the edge of the quilt against that tape edge and I never caught the binding on the front. I was using black thread on black fabric so any wobbles wouldn’t be noticed anyway. Another thing that helped is that the thin Bottom Line thread ended up on the front of the quilt, making stitches less visible. The stitching on the back went slowly because I just did about an inch at a time and readjusted the binding every time I stopped. It was still way faster than hand binding and should hold up much better. Another thing I learned from her video is to make sure the openings (“nostrils”) on the corners of the binding are facing opposite ways on the top and bottom. I chose to use free flowing lines of quilting and tried to outline each piece with the ruler. Because of the constant rehooping and thread color changing, the quilting process was very slow, even though I chose such an easy quilting design. I did quilt it very densely. I can’t seem to help myself. We are thinking of buying a real longarm (Innova) with a 12’ frame. It would be a dream come true. I just hate to give up all that space in the studio (and all that money!). It doesn’t really show in the photos but I quilted the sky in 4 different shades of blue, starting with the darkest at the top.