Ricci's Quilt...Part One

This is going to be the first of a series documenting the making of a wholecloth linen quilt and is dedicated to Ricci Lindley.

I taught for Superior Threads at their School of Threadology last month and Ricci works for Superior...she was my class assistant during my Open Thread Bars and is a very dear friend of mine. She gave me a small box of linens as a gift and also presented me with a beautiful white linen and asked if I could quilt it for her. It was very close to her heart...she was in Ireland at the time of 9/11 and bought this linen that day.

I just finished teaching at Asilomar this past week and have been feeling a bit pouty as I spent so much time preparing for this engagement I have had almost zero time at my machine. Like most of you, quilting is my therapy and being away from my machine and my quilting is not a good thing! I treated myself to spending an entire afternoon with Ricci's quilt in my machine today with good music and a nice hot cup of tea.

The pictures I am showing for this first segment will be the beginning of a journey turning an ordinary antique tablecloth into a beautiful heirloom quilt. I have added a small white doily in the middle of the quilt (surrounded by feathered hearts) and plan on adding some sort of special memento or token or Ricci's initials. I am wide open for suggestions or ideas.

Review of what has been done so far:
1. I pressed my piece flat. Folded it in half and then in half again. This made a quarter, I pressed my folds into firm creases. This defined my center and my quilt design markings were based off of these lines.

2. I layered my quilt on the basting table...backing down first, batting down second, underlayment third (this linen has cutwork so I needed to place a fabric underneath it so the batting would not fluff through), and then placed my linen on top.

3. I pin basted and then straight basted on the machine with Superior Threads' Vanish Lite.

4. I always quilt my "bones" in first, i.e. the spines of all my feather designs to help nail it down. I quilted my feathers second. I stitched in the ditch around all the whitework embroidery.

5. Now that the piece is not moving anywhere, the piece is now on my handwork table in the living room and I am drawing in all the background gridwork. I usually choose to do this after most of the quilting is done because when you are quilting your main designs the fabric tends to move and will make your marked straight lines wiggly.

6. Part Two will show you my marked straight background grid lines, adding echoing around the feathers, quilting my cathedral windows and scribbling to add sunshine and shadow.