Plodding Along on Hawaiian Hug

I finally got back to quilting Hawaiian Hug today. I just have the outer border left to do. I decided to use the Ocean Current pattern by Leah Day. If you haven't checked out her site, click on the link in the previous sentence! She has done a lot of work recently organizing her designs to make it easier to find the right kind of design for your project. You can search by design type, texture, difficulty level and design number. It is awesome! Great work Leah!! Thank you!!

So here is what it looks like after I have done all of the foundational swirls on my first side and a little bit of echoing.

And this is what the finished side looks like.

Not a great picture but it got dark before I remembered to take a picture for you. I'll take more tomorrow. I hope to finish this up tomorrow. I have one of the long side borders already done and most of one of the short sides finished. The husband is taking the boy skiing for the weekend!!! (doing the happy dance vigorously!) So I should have plenty of time to finish the quilting on this and be able to send it off to the recipient next week.

I learned while doing the first side that it helps to sew off the edge of the quilt every foot or so when doing your foundational swirls. This gives you a good "stopping" place for echo quilting so you don't have to echo the entire length of the quilt. It just made it much easier for me to manage this almost twin size quilt in my domestic machine. I am also getting quite a bit of practice at stopping and starting smoothly on this project. I can't say that I am an expert yet, but I am getting much better.