Kaffe Quilt Progress and Another Change of Plans

What? Some people actually sit on their couch??

This weekend I pulled out my Kaffe quilt again. I had to steam the wrinkles out as the pieces have been folded and sitting on the back of my couch since last time I worked on it. Once I had the pieces steamed I didn't want them to wrinkle again. Hence, the occupied couch.

Once wrinkle free (more or less) I marked the circles on both the remaining pieces. It's quite a tedious and time consuming project so I wanted to get it behind me.

By the end of the evening, I not only had them marked, but I had all the circles sewn on the larger piece!

The piece over the ironing board (on the left, above) had just been soaked and spun in the washing machine to get out all the water soluble markings. Here it is:

All the blue markings are out and the circles look good!

Tonight I sewed the circles on the smaller piece until I ran out of red thread. I wasn't sure how much to buy to do a whole quilt. I think two more will do it easily (three all together). I didn't, however, let running out of thread stop me. I threaded the machine with yellow because I had a new idea...

In looking at the completed piece, I really felt it wasn't enough quilting. I've written before about plans for quilting in the yellow squares. The fleur-de-lis I designed fit the space but didn't work with the busy yellow fabric. (Why fight such a pretty fabric?)

I had thought to leave them plain, but just couldn't do it. Tonight I thought a loose loopy pattern that kind of followed or echoed the flowers on the fabric might work. I'll try it on "just one square" I thought.

 Well, I must have liked it, because by the end of the night, I had eight done! I'm really liking the effect much better. Here's an overall view:

The new sewing adds a lot of texture and lets the circles "pop out" more.

And here's a view of the back:

I had more trouble while sewing in free motion mode with the thread fraying and snagging. I had to restart a lot. (Well, I also had trouble right at the beginning until I remembered to put the feed dogs down! Oops, big difference!!)

I was getting pretty frustrated (to my credit I did not throw the sewing machine across the room), and then I thought I would do the first thing that any shop would do: clean out the lint and put in a fresh needle. I only did one square after that, but it was a lot better! (In my defense, I can merely say that I did start with a new needle this evening, but I guess it was time to change it again.)

So that's what's been going on here. Anyone want to go to work for me tomorrow so I can keep sewing? I'd hate to interrupt when I've got all this good sewing mojo going. Oh wait, the boss is out of town for one more day...maybe I'll stay home without needing to find a replacement!!