On my design wall – Moonrise, part 4 – 2018.01.21

Progress on Moonrise – since my last post, I layered the quilt, and completed a lot of the quilting.

Layering.
In preparation for layering the quilt, I squared and trimmed the edges, then I machine basted 1/4″ from the edges.  This secured the ends of the loosely fused strips.

I used white felt as the middle layer.  I will be facing this art quilt, rather than binding it, so I cut the felt and the backing fabric smaller than the top – about 3/4″ on each edge.  Because these two layers don’t extend all the way to the edges, there will be a lot less bulk when I fold the edges and the facings to the back.

I spray-basted the three layers, then machine basted the felt/backing 1/8″ from the edge.  This basting will be removed after all the quilting is done.  You can see both lines of machine-quilting in the photos below.

Quilting. 
The fabric strips are pressed to a base of Pellon grid fusible interfacing, a low tack interfacing, which means the fabric can be easily re-positioned.  However, that also means the fabric strips are not securely affixed to the interfacing, so I wasn’t sure how well they would stay in place during the quilting.  I was pleasantly surprised – I had to re-press them a few times, but none of them fell off.

I quilted the lower half with horizontal wavy lines, spaced about 1/4″ apart.  Then I quilted the raw edges of the sky and cloud strips.  Now all the strips are secured in place, and I don’t have to be concerned about them coming loose.

I’m going to quilt the sky and clouds with straight horizontal lines about 1/4″ apart.  I will probably quilt the moon in the same way, or perhaps with wider spaced lines.

Here’s how it looks at this point.

Thanks for stopping by.  Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.