Cloudy Night Sky {Quilting Update}

Earlier this afternoon I finished what I consider to be the “first pass” of quilting for Cloudy Night Sky. I took photos along the way, so let’s take a look at how the base layer of quilting has progressed.

Cloudy Night Sky – Off-White Quilting First Pass Complete

On Monday, I was able to get the off-white quilting first pass complete. So, you might be thinking to yourself, what do you mean by first pass, Yvonne? Good question. Let’s take a look at my quilting plan illustration below.

Cloudy Night Sky – Design and Quilting Plan

I’m considering the first pass or base layer of quilting to be all the 1″ spaced quilting lines; it’s everything except for the dense vertical lines that I’ll use to add definition and detail for the stars and other larger fill areas of the quilt. So I finished all of the 1″ spaced lines that I planned to quilt in the off-white areas of the quilt on Monday.

Evaluating Fullness

Before moving on to start quilting the first pass quilting lines in navy, I looked over the quilting so far to make sure I was happy with how everything was coming together. There was one area that had a bit of extra fullness that you can see in the above photo. That fullness makes the fabric look like it is rippling a little bit.

Evaluating Fullness

So I put the quilt on my ironing board and warmed up my iron. Then I used a spray bottle to get that area damp and slowly and carefully eased in the fullness of the area by warming up, drying out, and gently tugging the quilt around. I also had an acrylic ruler that I was using to make sure that I was keeping the seam lines straight as I was working. In effect, I basically “blocked” this small section of the quilt. If I had been unable to remove the fullness, I would have ripped quilting lines, repeated the small blocking work, and then re-quilted the area. Thankfully, that extra effort wasn’t needed.

Cloudy Night Sky – Off-White Quilting First Pass Complete – View of Quilt Backing

I also turned the quilt over to make sure that there were no major tucks or ripples happening that I needed to address. Because I like to bury my thread tails as I go, I also looked over the back carefully to make sure none of the thread tails had accidentally poked through to show on the back of the quilt.

Cloudy Night Sky – First Pass Quilting Complete

Knowing that there was more navy to quilt in this first pass than off-white, I immediately changed out the thread on my machine and did a quick service (dusted bobbin area, oiled, etc.) and started the navy quilting. As I mentioned at the beginning of the blog post, after working on it Monday, Tuesday, and this afternoon, I just finished all of the first pass quilting.

Cloudy Night Sky – First Pass Quilting Complete – View of Quilt Backing

Once again, I took my time looking at both the quilt top and backing over carefully.

Dropped Stitch Marker

The only thing I have found is a spot where my stitch length is too long, likely due to a dropped stitch, in one of the off-white quilted arcs. So I’ve marked that spot so I won’t forget to get that fixed.

From here, I’m going to do the same quilt blocking process I used in the off-white area that had a lot of fullness in each of the locations where I want to go back and add dense straight line quilting. After blocking those areas, I’ll mark my first reference lines and get started finishing off the quilting plan. The great news is that all of the turning the quilt through the throat of my machine is complete (well, or it will be once I fix the dropped stitch). Onward!