Yesterday evening was the night before Thanksgiving and, since we would be eating out this year (alleluia!) I did not have a lot of prep work to do in the kitchen. I decided to resurrect my Whirligiggles quilt. It has been a long time since I have made any progress on it, my last related post titled Changing and Rearranging having been published in February. I stalled, as I usually do, in the sandwiching stage where I add the batting and backing. I had finished joining the five vertical panels back in February but had yet to press those four vertical seams to one side. I started pressing the seams last night and got frustrated. The seams of each hexagon had behaved nicely, swirling obediently even in the multi-intersection centers; but those vertical joining seams were very lumpy bumpy at the multi-seam intersections and would not lie flat no matter how aggressively I commanded them to. Further complicating the issue was that I kept bumping the correctly-lying seams in the process. I set the top aside in frustration, swearing never again to make a quilt with so many @#$% seams.
THANKSGIVING MORNING
Either my standards were lower or my patience was higher, but the next morning, Thanksgiving Day, I got up early and completed the pressing with no problem. Thanks be to the quilt gods. I surely did not want this project to be stored in limbo after all the effort I had put into piecing it. I tried several times to tape the layers first to my cutting table and then to the floor in my upstairs sewing room, but conceded that I needed more space to spread out. Off I went to the area at the base of the stairs, between my kitchen nook and family room. I taped the backing to the hardwood floor and then smoothed the bamboo batting on top of it. Then I folded the top in quarters and placed it with the folded corner in the center.
My husband came downstairs and laughed to see me sprawled out and crawling around on the floor in my bare feet, grumbling that I was too old for this and that my knees hurt.
Once I had the top opened up, centered, and smoothed out, the bright colors smiled and winked at me and gave me renewed energy to continue and spray baste the layers together. I remembered what I liked about this quilt.
I protected my floor and carpet from the fine overspray mist by laying out a few pillowcases. There is not a lot of stray adhesive and it is water soluble, but still I wanted to protect my floor and carpet. I used to use newspapers but they would blow around if I did not tape them in place and then they would rip when I tried to reposition them. Pillowcases work great. They are heavy enough to stay put and I just throw them in the washer when I am finished. First I folded back the batting and backing and sprayed the 505 basting spray on the batting and adhered it to the backing, one half at a time.
Once the batting was adhered to the backing I did the same process with the top. I folded the top back half way and sprayed the batting.
Then I walked the top is place laying it down as I walked over it.
Surprisingly enough, it settles itself down very evenly without wrinkles. Then I crawl around and smooth from the center out to make sure the layers are stuck to each other.
As I was crawling around and smoothing my husband asked me "Is that called basting a quilt?" I said yes, that I was spray basting. He remarked, "Huh. Most people baste a turkey on Thanksgiving!"
WHOOPS
As I stood up and admired my efforts I noticed - uh, oh – a MISTAKE!
The top edge has a zig zag border, green/red, green/red, green/red alternating with grey/white partial pinwheels.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Ha! Love Dad's point about T-day! But whirliegigs turned out beautifully (I never would have noticed about the border if you hadn't pointed it out), I too am thankful for 505 basting spray (so much easier than pinning!), and I am thankful for these blogs as a forum to share all the pictures and stories of our projects!
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