Quilting with Audrey

On Sunday evening I basted my stained quilt. First, I used up the 50 special quilters safety pins I bought a while back.

Not enough...

I got out my little box of variously sized regular safety pins. (Gift from my mom at some point during college; they used to be part of her sewing supply stash.)

Still not quite enough...

I pondered going over to Joann's. Not worth the drive - time or gas... I pondered going over to Target - closerd, but more effort to find exactly where safety pins are stocked. Then it dawned on me, I'd used several safety pins to jimmy up the black out lining for curtains at our old apartment. Since we've yet to put the curtains up again here, I stole the 24 safety pins from that "project."

Victory! It was just enough!

*Side note: I actually thought it was easier to work with the straight safety pins, so I'll be stocking up on those.

In the middle of basting

As you can see, I used a larger piece of batting than necessary. It was on hand. I really didn't want to spend more money just now. Besides, with smaller pieces of batting to use up, maybe I'll make some mini quilts or something. (Does anyone know whether it's advisable to use batting in coasters? This is Warm and White.)

There's about an inch and a half of batting beyond the quilt top on all sides.

I also cut it closer to the edge of the quilt top than is recommended I think. I'm cheap trying to be thrifty by keeping the left over bits as large as possible so the can be more readily used later.

On Tuesday evening, I began stitching in the ditch. I meant to post about my progress that night as well, but my computer was playing dead. It made an awful beeping noise when I turned it on, then had to go through a repair scan since Windows failed to start for some reason.

Long story short: it scared me, but seems to be back to normal now.