Progress on Celtic Solstice

I am very pleased to report in on my Celtic Solstice progress because I feel I actually have progress this week. It is down off the basting wall and under the quilting needle of my Janome. But wait there’s more….I have three rows of quilting done!

Here’s a shot of the quilting from the back. The line running through is a basting row I took . Well, actually I was going to do diagonal lines and this was the first one. Turns out I didn’t like where it was going and changed the quilting plan but left the two diagonal lines in for stability.  Once all the quilting is done I will  take these out.




This is the front. The little flecks of white are bits of tissue left from the quilting pattern. I am using one of the long rolls of quilting patterns I bought on our visit to Keepsake Quilting in New Hampshire last fall. This is the last of it and I am making it go farther by tracing the pattern on tissue paper and sewing through that.



It takes a little longer to do this way. I have to tape the tissue in long strips and then transfer the pattern. I've  been using a Crayola Washable marker to do it as I like the way it marks and any transfer to the quilt will presumably wash out.   Last time I did this I put a layer of glass to protect the original pattern from bled through of the marker but not as worried this time as this will be the last use of this roll. When I get down to the last row I'll just use the paper pattern.  The first time I tried this tissue paper technique I used pins to hold it to the quilt top. Now I spray the back of the paper with basting spray to hold it in place. It is not a 100% adherence, you possible can see in the picture places where the paper has lifted when I moved the quilt. But it is working better than anything else I have tried so far.
Grand total of 3 rows quilted so far with the fourth under the needle. A cold snap this week has spurred my efforts to get this done as I have decided this will be our quilt.  The only thing preventing me from doing more will be my work schedule.

Now to do the link  up with  Jo's Country Junction  and see what everyone else has done this week.