I’ve changed the name of my Summertime Quilt, It’s now HST Love, as in Half Square Triangle Love. Thought it was appropriate since it’s mainly HSTs.

On my last quilty post–two weeks ago–I said that I find basting “cumbersome” and I was procrastinating.

Let…me…explain…

I do “wall basting”. I learned this method from the blog ChristaQuilts. Which is pinning the quilt pieces on the wall and spray basting with 505 Temporary Adhesive. And I do this on a wall in my grrrrrrl garage. While most of my garage contains my fitness equipment and a corner for crafty stuff, we also park the family vehicle in there. Which means every time the garage door opens, in come the leaves–and perhaps a few lizards and a lot of pollen. So before I can wall baste, I sweep out the garage and wipe down the walls. (cumbersome) Then I get out my step ladder and get to work making the quilt sandwich. You can see me in action on a different quilt here.

Next up, into the house to iron on my pressing table. My pressing table is a padded platform that I put on my regular ironing board. Terry and I made it. It’s 72″ long. It’s wonderful. I only use it when quilting. Otherwise I slide it into my “Harry Potter Closet” under the stairs. Cause it is quite large and takes up most of the sewing room.

I press the front and push out all the wrinkles. Then I press the back and push out all the wrinkles. The nice thing about 505, it can be moved and mostly stays tacky. And I do a lot of moving during the pressing process.

Next up. I trim and pin baste along the edges. This is the first trim. I keep about 2″ on all the sides. Because if I leave it as is, I could possibly get it all mushed up and quilt over it. Yes. That has happened. So I do some trimming then and I get my quilting safety pins out and pin along the exterior. Because after all that basting and pressing, the 505 will give up the edges. It’s still good in the middle.

Now I’m ready to quilt. Or perhaps I’m ready to look at it for a really long time on my cutting table and decide what binding fabric I should use. There is always LOTS of that going on. Although I feel like I’m wasting a LOT OF TIME while pondering, I must do it!

Now I’m quickly going to discuss thread. I almost always use Aurifil thread for quilting. It’s cotton. There are SO many colors. I love it. BUT. For this quilt, I’m using Gutermann Mara 100 Poly Wrapped Poly Core Thread – Tex 30–and why? I bought it from Wawak after I watched the sew along with Noodlehead. This is the thread that she suggested because it is extra strong for totes. After trying it out, I decided to stick with upholstery thread for totes. That stuff will not break when I try to snap it apart. (Also very difficult to remove with my friend Jack the Ripper) This thread does snap so I’m not using it on my totes. BUT. It’s also stronger than cotton thread. I’m sewing recycled denim jeans which to be honest has a lot of polyester in them. And I’m planning to use this quilt for picnics and it will be washed ALOT so I want to use something tougher than Aurifil. When I pieced it, I used this thread. And now I’m quilting it with this thread. I did all the piecing for this quilt with my Brother PQ1500SL and I did the quilting with the same machine using a Jeans 100/16 needle. This quilt is VERY thick and I was concerned about getting through all the seams on the HSTs. It hung up twice. The second time I changed the needle and it never stopped again. (Duh! why didn’t I change the needle the first time?) I quilted on the diagonal which I thought turned out well.

Next week! Final trimming, label, binding–finished for sure!

And since I’m on the color blue, here’s my first agapanthus for the season!