I’m happy to show you this finished quilt!  Layer Cake Explosion was the Twilter! quilt-along.  The design is by Angela Gross, and you can find it on Craftsy.

Because I used wider sashing, my quilt measured a whopping 93″ square, which was tough to cram under the machine.  In a moment of particular lunacy, I thought how nice it would look with a double batting…but I quickly regained my sense, and went with just one layer (Pellon’s Nature’s Touch 80/20).  This is a new batting to me, and it was fine, but didn’t seem a lot different from the Warm cotton I usually use.  I did like the careful way it was folded in the package, which made it very easy to trim and position the large batting.  Yes, it would have looked wonderful with double or extra puffy batting, but it’s just fine this way.  Yuri checked.

For once I feel like I did a good job designing the quilting.  I was influenced by Wild Quilting by Christina Cameli, which I watched on the free Craftsy day.  No, I didn’t do improv quilting like she did, but I got her message of echoing things to give them depth.  So where I would usually have made one Orange Peel motif in a block, I echoed each twice.  I also added a line to each of the border circles.  All the quilting on the top is Superior Rainbows 9808, Opal) and the bottom is pink Bottom Line.

By including the sashing with each block, I was trying to quilt 11″ circles, just impossible to control on this bulky quilt.  I knew that, but I wanted to try and I’m glad I did.  Some of it is imperfect, especially near the center, but I still like the interlocking circles.  

The quilting improved greatly when I finally put on my quilting gloves.  I hate them, they’re hot and itchy, but they really worked in this situation.

Allison at Cluck Cluck Sew posted just last week about quilting large quilts.  I agree with almost everything she says (especially about quilting-by-checkbook!), except for spray basting.  It really doesn’t take much to hold the quilt.  You know that I usually use just a little, just barely wafting the spray over the layers.  This time I was concerned about holding this large thing together, so I gave it an extra waft. (Still using that can I started in January.)  I used my Ping Pong table, basting the center first, then moving it to baste each side.  I couldn’t be more pleased with the way it held.  I had no shifting and not a pleat or wrinkle on the back!  I used twelve bobbins of thread to quilt this.

Speaking of the back, somehow this star landed  perfectly in the center.  Notice the quilting from the block on the other side.  Could never do that again!

 It’s important to have a quilt photography assistant who can climb trees.

Thank you, Daisy for leading this project, and Angela for sharing your pattern.

I’ll be linking up to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, and Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.