What was I thinking? I’m trying to have a zen experience with my quilting by breaking up the negative space in my Modern Quilt with lots of different quilting designs. But I think I went a little overboard with all the small scale background fillers!

I actually do like the texture the quilting is adding to the quilt, but when you see how little of the quilt I’ve actually finished compared to how much is left to quilt, you’ll start to pity me…

The picture below shows about 1/4 of the quilt finished. I’m adding larger scale textures in each of the charm squares and a smaller scale background around each of the hands. I’ve quilted 12 out of 42 charm blocks which represents about 5-6 hours of solid quilting so far.

I am having fun quilting different designs in the blocks though. I’ve outlined some elephants, practiced my pebbles and grids and even quilted the alphabet on the lined paper fabric! Here are a couple more closeups, just for fun!

I’m linking this blog post to the Free-Motion Quilting Project and WIP Wednesdays so I can share the insanity!!! This will definitely be a long term project. But if I quilt 1 block a day, I can finish it in under a month!

I used a clean toothbrush dipped in water to erase the blue pen marks once I quilted them.

For those of you interested in what materials I used, I started with 1 charm pack of Moda’s Bungle Jungle by Tim and Beck, and 2 1/2 yards of White Kona Cotton Solid. I sewed together a layer cake for the backing.

I am doing all the quilting with 60 weight polyester thread  in a light gray.  I chose Superior Threads bottom line in both the top and bobbin. It breaks too easily in the top thread for my taste – but it is very fine and blends beautifully. My batting is wool which gives a nice faux trapunto look to the little hands.

I hope I get more done by next week! I think I’d better go work on my jelly roll quilt now…..