Blog silence but the Juki is humming

We have moved back aboard the boat, hooray! It actually happened right after my last post. The boat was still out of the water, so getting aboard required climbing this loooong, wobbly ladder. All the stuff we had moved into the RV also traveled up a ladder to return to its boatly home, so it was a pretty tiring process.

All my fabric and the tops I stitched up in the RV ended up in a giant pile on the bed in my sewing studio (also known as the second stateroom.) I decided to finish adding borders and sew backs for all the tops, then baste them all in an exciting week of March Basting Madness.

I didn't take any photos during the basting, but you can read here about my on-the-bed technique.  Here's the stack of basted pieces, ready for quilting. I basted eight and I'm feeling quite industrious. I've decided which three will go to the three charities in the Hands2Help Challenge, plus one for Covered in Love. H2H has the earliest deadline, so I'll work on those as soon as possible.

Today I started quilting Sweet Astrodelic, even though it isn't for H2H. That's because I'm using a backing fabric that isn't standard quilting cotton. It's a very cute little yellow rooster print, but seems to be thicker and more loosely woven. I want to use the same fabric on the much larger Veggie Mountain, but only if it quilts and washes up well on this piece. 

Sweet Astrodelic is being quilted in a loose stipple, to keep it soft and get it finished quickly. If the backing passes muster, it will probably be a Project Linus donation. If it falls apart or shrinks strangely, I'll be sad but not devastated.

I've already learned something important on this quilt. My Juki does NOT like Connecting Threads brand thread! I broke three needles before I figured out it was the thread. That was three different brands of needles, too. Very strange! My theory is that the thinner Aurifil that I usually use glides through the eye of the needle more smoothly and is less likely to "catch" as I free motion quilt. In any case, after I switched back to a very similarly colored Aurifil 50 weight, I've had no problems and the thread change is undetectable on the quilt.

I sent Kat one of the extra spools of Connecting Threads that I had, along with this month's blocks. Kat, if it works in your machine, I'll send you two more spools. If not, toss it in the trash!

And speaking of spools, here is our 400' long anchor chain, all spooled out on the ground. We mark it every 50 feet with alternating red and yellow paint so it's easier to keep track of how much we have left. The length of chain used to anchor depends on the depth of the water, so it's important to keep track. Over time, the paint wears off and needs to be renewed. This time, we also had the entire chain re-galvanized, so it looks shiny and brand new! I'm rather unnaturally excited about this, so I'm sharing it with you, my quilty friends.