Virtual Show and Tell: Ombre crib quilt

The ombre crib quilt is officially done and gifted. I almost didn’t think I’d get it done in time for the baby shower on Saturday, the quilting powers that be seemed to be against it happening.

A friend of mine is have her second baby. We’re from the same town, went to junior high, high school and college together. After school we both ended up staying in the Quad-Cities and live within walking distance of each others houses. It will be fun to see our kids play with each other since they’ll be so close together in age.

She is not finding out the gender of her baby, so I wanted to pick something that would work for a boy or a girl. The Kona Skinny Strips in the Bright pallet seemed like the perfect fit. I thought the color changes would capture the attention of a baby looking at them for the first time.

When it came time to quilt it I had a few options. I could have done straight line quilting on my home machine using a walking foot to help emphasize the straight lines of the jelly roll. That would have given the quilt a modern look.

The other option, which I chose for this quilt, was to do an allover free motion quilting pattern with a curving look to it. The swirls I chose help soften the stark lines of the quilt and provide a good juxtaposition with the straight lines.

I had some thread issues during the quilting process and turned off the stitch regulator on the longarm in an attempt to fix them. I ended up changing thread three times until I found a thread that would behave, but I discovered I actually prefer quilting without the stitch regulator.

When I sewed into the points at the center of the swirl with the stitch regulator I tend to slow down a little bit. The stitch regulator ensures the stitches are even on the way in, but when I back out and speed up a little bit, I end up with big stitches as the stitch regulator catches up to my change in speed. That’s not the case with the stitch regulator. The stitches get a little smaller as I slow down and then are an acceptable size as I back out. And if I had to choose between too small and too large, I’ll pick too small every time.

Granted I feel the stitch regulator was absolutely essential as I learned how to use the longarm, but now that I have some confidence and many hours of practice, I found it easier to get the results I wanted without it.

I’m definitely going to turn it off the next time I’m at the longarm.