Paper Lanterns – a baby girl quilt

The wife of my former workmate gave birth to their first child last week. A sweet little girl.

May there always be lights (and lanterns) to light your way, little Johanna!

Raw edge appliqué and free motion quilted black wires.

Double loops as background quilting…

I quilted the baby’s name in the lower right corner.

I used different designs within the lanterns.

Backing and binding. And my new name tag including washing instructions.

I am rather pleased with the result. A not too girly baby quilt. The process gave me some pains though. I had huge problems with tension and breaking threads. It was the first time I encountered these problems with my sewing machine. After changing needles twice, cleaning my machine, rethreading multiple times the problem was still the same. I was so disappointed and frustrated.

Ironically, my machine worked perfectly when I quilted on a test-sandwich. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I had put the wrong side of the batting up. Trudi explained last year that, when using needle punched batting, the side with the little knots aught to face downwards. Mine faced upwards. I need to remember this when basting my next quilt!

What do you do when you encounter thread breaks?!

Happy Quilting!
Christine