Getting Back To The X Plus!

Hi, everyone!  Let's get back to that first X Plus quilt!  I've been busy - so let me do a quick summary!

Once I got the top pieced, I chose the quilting thread:

I know. It's not a King Tut. Remember - I'm trying to use what I have on hand. Sadly, the King Tut thread I thought I was going to use was way too "lime" to be a good fit. This is Aurifil and is a very nice thread, also. The only hitch to it is that the spool is taller than either of my spindles; to keep it from flying around (especially while winding a bobbin) I used my adapter:

Yes, a plastic straw. Hey, it works! And I would normally put a cross-wound spool on the horizontal spindle, but again -- it's too long. I've since purchased an adapter for cones and other spools and will blog about that soon. I'm excited about it, as it opens up a whole new realm of threads.

ANYWAY ... I pieced the back of the quilt:

... and after a day or two of procrastinating, I spray basted it:

That has to be my least favorite part of the process, in case anyone was wondering. I also added small safety pins along the outside edges, as added insurance.

On to the quilting!

I had a great plan for some really cool straight line quilting. I hated it - and ripped it all out. That was Plan A. I also ripped out Plans B, C, and D. Probably E, too.

Eventually, I let myself go free-style and was much happier!

So was Maggie. I'll show you details later. On to the binding!

I pieced it from scraps, of course.

Because I do that, I try to lay it out on the quilt before I sew it, to avoid having a thick seam fall right on a corner.

That's as close as I like to get. And usually I connect the strips at an angle, but that section was already pieced together like that. I think it was part of the back.

The front of the binding is on now:

I'm almost done with the hand work on the String Quilt - then I'll start the process on this one!

Thanks for reading!
KZK