In the Hoop

So I got the king-size behemeth spread out on the floor and pin-basted yesterday morning. It actually went better than I had expected...notwithstanding the sore knees and shoulders today!  Only took about two hours to pin after all the layers were smoothed out.

All pinned

The nasty looking ripples in the pink border looked a lot less forbidding after being pinned into some form of submission, and I expect think hope will quilt out nicely.  This vintage top came from the same Ohio Mennonite estate sale as the Blockade quilt completed in December.

The backing fabric came from the bargain basement of a local quilt shop in Oregon a few years back, luckily just enough to back the entire quilt.

The top came to me with all the sashings and borders already lightly pencil marked for quilting.  The appliqued/embroidered blocks are also marked in blue ink, part of the original block pattern.  I suspect they may have been meant to be embroidered.  After all these years I'm not sure those blue markings will come out completely so I decided to use big stitch quilting and try to cover as much of the blue as possible with the green Presencia No. 8 pearl cotton. This is what it looked like after a little while quilting last evening.

No expectations about finishing this one very soon, in fact it will probably come out of the hoop several times as higher priority projects are ready ... or as I get bored with this one. Except for the green pearl cotton big stitch quilting in the blocks the remainder will be done with regular old-fashioned white thread quilting to outline the appliques and in the sashings and borders.  But it is nice to have a project back in the floor hoop again.