This latest quilt off the frame belonged to my husband’s aunt and uncle and pieced by my husband’s Grandmother Shaw.  It is a vintage doubleknit done in alternating blue and white 4″ blocks.  They were given to me a few years ago and I was to quilt them whenever I could.  I originally thought I needed to get doubleknit for the backing fabric, but found that plain cotton was used on a lot of these.  I bought some plain Moda cotton in wide width on sale and had a slight lull in my quilt queue.  Originally, these were meant to be tied, but I thought I’d see how they quilted on the longarm.  Ouch.  I may never do another one again (and I have one more of these in my pile of quilts to do).  This was challenging on several fronts.  The blocks were hand-sewn and the fabrics were all stretchy.  The white fabric had a bit of cotton in it, but the blue was all polyester or nylon.  My machine did NOT like the blue fabric AT ALL.  I had a leftover cone of Filtec white that I started this with and I was able to get it to sew without a lot of tension problems.  It tended to skip stitches on the blue fabric, though.  Halfway through, I ran out of that thread and tried using some Omni thread instead.  No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get that thread or any other white thread I had in stock to work.  So, I ordered some replacement Filtec.  I was on the last row when I realized I had not allowed enough fabric to account for the stretch and was short on the backing fabric one inch.  I to piece an extra few inches on the back to finish it.  When I finally took this off I thought “never again will I do one of these on my longarm!!”  The one that is left I’ll probably just tie.

Now, I was in a hurry to get this one done because my aunt and uncle were going through some health problems and were in the hospital in St. Louis and I wanted to get this done for them while they were down there.  Sunday, my stepson Nick plays at Busch stadium in St. Louis (high school game after the regular Cardinal game).  We’re meeting Ed’s Uncle Max and cousin David at the game and I wanted to give this to them afterwards.  The replacement thread came on Thursday.  Saturday I had a quilt in an exhibition at the new Visitors Center in Shelbyville, so I spent a couple of hours there.  My granddaughter was in a dance recital yesterday evening.  I took this off the longarm right before I left for the recital.  I got the binding attached at 9:45 p.m. last night and stayed up till 2 a.m. sewing the binding to the back and washing it.  But it’s DONE!  I hope they get some enjoyment out of it.  It does look nice considering all the trials and tribulations I went through (not counting the 6 needles).