Process and shiny new things

First, a note about the OMG Pink Quilt of Much Pinkness.

I had just been reading in one of my big quilting encyclopedias about different types of face plates (the metal part that the needle goes down through), and you can buy a special one with a very small hole for working on finer fabrics to keep them from getting shoved down the hole and caught in all manner of moving parts down there.  

I do not have any such special face plate, but it would have been ideal for trying to stitch through that stupid white mystery fabric.  But, taking the idea that not letting the fabric get pushed through the hole in the faceplate was key to working with this stuff, I ended up just pinning at the very very edge of the pieces and starting the tiniest titch after the pin.  I don't like putting pins under the presser foot, but I used one of the ones that was already slightly bent and was just really careful to not let the machine needle hit it on those first couple of stitches. 

I also planned to say something about getting the lace edge on that quilt, and in a word or two, it sucked.  Probably mostly because that was the first time I had ever tried that technique and didn't have the edges cut down exactly to the point where I needed them.  For envelope construction, it is very very very important to cut the edges down to size with all the pieces in place the way you're going to sew them.  I cut and then rearranged and things got bad. 

Also, I think that if I do the lace thing again, I'll go ahead and pin the lace to either the front or the back, then pin all four layers (two fabric, one batting, one lace) together.  That will be a lot of pins, but it should also save the pain of discovering that there are points at which the top layer of fabric didn't catch in the seam.  Many points.  Aaaargh. 

MOVING ON! 

After two near-painless sessions, this top is done. 

This is a charm pack of bolds from Connecting Threads, plus three prints.  Two dots and one dandelions. 

And here is a picture of the final layout audition, in black and white for insight into how the values were lining up. 

I did my usual OCD washing of the charm squares before using them.  I cut them down to 4.5x4.5 because some of them shrank a bit and also: OCD.  I plan to straight-line quilt, probably in a billion different colors because that sounds like fun. 

A pieced back might happen - I left two squares out of the front, for numbers and also because they were very similar to shades already included.  But in order for my plan to work, I need to find several more solids, and aside from gray, dark gray, and yardage in shades quite similar to the two I already have, there's not much to go with in my stash.  I'm itching to get this basted and on to quilting, so maybe a pieced back won't happen.