Making a Quilt a Quilt

After years of procrastinating, I finally finished piecing oldest child's quilt, pinned it with the batting and backing, and now I'm getting ready to quilt it!  Oldest child is an Eagle Scout.  With this thought in mind, I purchased the fabric for a Boy Scout Quilt online at the Fat Quarter Shop.  (No affiliate link here, I just wanted to let you know where I found the fabric!) 

The pattern included with the fabric was easy to follow.  A four square alternated with a large block.  Everything is joined together with green strips.  This begs the question - Why did I procrastinate so much?

I hand quilt what I make, so I've got to get this mounted into a quilting hoop.  My hoop is big.  I found it about 30 years ago, and I adore it!  The hoop is easy to use, and it screws tightly together to hold the fabric in place.  I've seen floor mounted hoops, but I like this one because it is portable.  I'm not tied down to one location with this hoop.

My quilting hoop.  You see that big wood block on the upper left corner?  That's got the screw and wing nut, where I tighten the hoop once I've placed it securely over the fabric.

A view of the squares.  The blanket is not yet mounted on the hoop.

In the hoop, I've tightened the wing nut to hold the fabric in place.

This is a crucial step.  I pull the fabric from the outside of the hoop.  The fabric needs to be tight so that the stitches and fabric are even and there are no fabric puckers.

Fully loaded and ready to begin!  I'll pull the loose threads off before I begin quilting.  The safety pins hold the layers of fabric together.  As I quilt, I'll remove the safety pins from the area where I am working.

I've had people ask me before how to quilt.  I'll tell you what my husband's grandmother told me when she taught me how to quilt:  You just go up and down and up and down and keep on going until you're done!

Seriously, you just make a series of small stitches.  If you've ever cross stitched or embroidered, you can quilt.

For this quilt, I'm going to outline the big squares, in the green lattice work.  Inside of each square, I'm going to quilt diamonds- much like I did with middle child's t-shirt quilt, only these are smaller squares, so there will be fewer diamonds.  I'll post pictures of the quilting itself in a couple of weeks.

I feel like I should do "something" else in the green lattice work, but I'm not certain what I'll do.  I'll have to outline a few squares first and see how I like this before I decide.