I finished my Christmas sewing! I made 24 double sided napkins from the Holiday Flourish fabric, eight each to my mom, sister, and sister-in-law. I loved how they turned out. Of course, I didn’t take any photos. Darn. I’m now helping another sister-in-law with her Christmas project. She is making a quilt from the pre-printed masks. She added borders to the large and small masks to create 12″ finished blocks. She alternated those with other Christmas fabrics. The quilt TOP photo is below. It was a quick picture, sorry for the blur.

I helped with the next steps, layering, basting and marking quilting lines. We did not have all the supplies, so we worked with what we had. Needles and thread. I am a huge fan of thread basting the quilt layers together. Sure, I’ve used safety pins but I find it easier to thread baste. No need to remove the long basting threads in less they are in your way. A quick snip of the thread and you can keep quilting. Safety pins take time to unhook so they don’t get caught in the presser foot.

We did have a large table to baste the quilt together and we basted in sections. We started in the middle. Basted all the center section then moved the quilt sandwich to baste each side. Worked great. I typically tape the backing to the table so it is taut. This helps to ensure you don’t have any ripples in the backing fabric. No tape here, so we pulled gently, one of us on each side and made do!

#1 – Give thread basting a try! I find it easier to snip a thread then to stop an undo a safety pin.

#2 – Thread baste with a friend (or family) it sure makes the job go faster!

Barb has been steadily quilting all afternoon, we are hoping for binding tomorrow!

in quilting,

Debbie