It's Time for some Quilting! w/Updates

Miss Betty & I have spent considerable time apart of late, while yours truly readied several/many quilt tops, including quite a few Quilts of Valor, for quilting.  Now has come the time to start quilting them!

First in the quilting line-up, a quilt top created by 'our Doris', bordered out and ready for quilting. Once we got our thread options chosen - one of our long-time favorites, you'll remember this one:

Superior's Rainbows Patriotic machine quilting thread - one of our favs!

...along with one of our favorite bobbin thread choices:

Maxi-lock for bobbin thread and Revive for press-F R E E/wrinkle F R E E backings...
what a perfect quilting combo!  (Additional info here:  www.melaleuca.com/deblindley)

When we got the quilt sandwich loaded, time to attach the side tensioners for stress-F R E E quilting:

Side Tensioner

Here's a close-up:

Customized 'Betty Boop' side tensioners - got this neat idea from
Professional Quilt Artist/Instructor, Sharon Schamber...works great!

ALL the links to the Sharon Schamber tutorial videos may be found under our Favorite Tutorials page here:  http://donebybettyboop.blogspot.com/p/favorite-tutorials.html

After the quilt top/backing/batting is loaded, bobbins are wound, machine threaded, side tensioners attached, favorite House episode of Season #3 picked out and ready to watch/listen to, time to start quilting! That is until a storm blew in and the power went out...UGH!

Alrighty then - 2 hours later, after the storm passed and the power returned, it was NOW time to quilt, and quilt we did!

This was FUN!!

Quilting the Stars and Swirls panto

This is also one of our tried and true pantos, you should remember this one, too ;-)

Dave Hudson's Random Stars panto

We haven't quite quilted 100 Quilts of Valor with this favorite panto but, we're getting close!

And no QOV of ours would be considered complete without a little McTavishing, and here we go:

McTavishing the top border w/LOTS of swirls to mimic a waving flag

This side border came out really nice, we think:

McTavished side border w/Rainbows Patriotic...neat!

As soon as ALL the panto quilting and our version of McTavishing is complete, we'll go back and add the continuous firecracker swirls we're so fond of in the white picture frame perimeter borders, and this very special Quilt of Valor will be ready for binding and labeling.  We'll update this post w/pics as we progress.

IF we hadn't lost our power for those 2 hours, might've been able to finish!  Oh well, there's ALWAYS tomorrow, tomorrow...

It's Tomorrow!  UPDATE 4/07/2016: just finished quilting and coming off the frame:

Doris's QOV coming off the frame

Some close-ups:

Star panto quilting w/Firecracker swirls and McTavishing quilting in the borders

The back shows the quilting a little better ;-)

ALL quilted and ready for binding and labeling!

Time to make some binding!

UPDATE 4/21/2016:  ALL finished and ready to be awarded to Doris's Vietnam Vet.  You may read ALL about it by following this direct weblink to our East Central IL QOV blog posting: http://eastcentralilqov.blogspot.com/2016/04/korean-veteranmcdonalds-employee.html

Later,
~Deb