Started the Quilting!

I knew for this challenge project I wanted to stretch  myself, so I decided to do custom quilting, which I've never done. On a home machine, and being a newbie at this (I've owned my machine less than a year, folks!), I've only so far done straight line quilting with just a teeny tiny little bit of custom touches on two projects.  As most of my projects are big (bed sized), it's *hard* to wrestle a quilt through a home machine with the precision needed for custom stuff.  The small size of this challenge quilt -- perfect!

I started with the buildings, and did a mix of vertical lines, horizontal lines and diagonal lines, so that the buildings touching each other all have lines going different directions. This way it helps separate the different buildings, although I also did a tight zig zag down the edges or  outline of each building, as well.

notice on these buildings -- diagonal, vertical, opposite diagonal (following the
edge of the slanty line up top on that building), horizontal, vertical, and so on..

I also went ahead and did a zig zag in the street section, just straight across following the edges of the street.  I skipped over the SP to enhance the trapunto, and left the SP unquilted so that it really pops.

I did this all with the walking foot and a regular straight stitch, and all with pivoting, so that it is one continuous line of quilting from the left edge to the right, back and forth, up and down, side to side, marching on until it gets to the far edge. It was a LOT of pivoting, but so worth it! I love how the buildings turned out!

I lined up the edge of the walking foot with the line I wanted to follow.
When I reached the edge of the building, I would stop with the needle in the fabric,
raise the foot, pivot the fabric, take 2 or 3 stitches down the edge (going over the zig zag)
and then pivot again, line up the foot against the line just sewn,
sew back in the opposite direction, repeat ad nauseum until all the buildings were quilted in this manner.

Look, it even looks nice on the back! First time I've ever used a backing fabric + thread combo that lets the quilting show up on the back. Gulp! Scary stuff, that, but since it's a wall hanging I didn't worry about it and just did what I wanted. It turned out lovely, though, so I'm extra happy! Very proud of myself for stretching this far. Now on to the hills and background....

front (in progress) and back
I love that I can look at the back and tell where the buildings are!