KR

Instead of using a tape measure to try to determine how much thread you will need, you might try using yarn or even some of your pearle cotton. Lay it down over your design lines, then pick it up and measure it. May be a little easier to "trace" your lines with something smaller than a tape measure.

bearisgray

Fantastic quilting design.
The owl fabric is really cute.
I like the colors you are using.

You said you were going "unconventional" - so the very informal and fun owls with the formal quilting design will probably "work" for you.

The design you have created is so pretty, I would love to have it show (more) on both sides of the fabric - I think it will get lost on the owl side.

I

Lobster

I'm fairly sure it will get lost on the owl side, which is one reason why I picked a thread that would blend in well there (I went for a nice orange in the end). But does that really matter? One side will be very clear Welsh quilting against a semi-plain background, and the other side will be snuggly flannel with cute owls, probably showing the quilting pattern if you hold it up at the right angle to the light. That said, as I'm using thicker thread and my stitches all get through to the back when I'm using thicker thread (at least when there are no seam allowances to quilt through!), the pattern will probably show up reasonably well. It'll be a good test run to see just how good my quilting is on the back when I'm using perle #8. With the other projects that I've done with perle #8, it looks reasonably good on the back, with the odd skipped stitch when I'm sewing through seam allowances. I'm working on getting it to look good on the back when I finish one piece of thread and move on to the next, which I was able to focus on when making that netbook case last week (see photo), as it was so small that I could easily flick to the underside to see how the stitch placement was working out. I think I'm getting the knack of that, and by the time I've finished an entire wholecloth, I imagine I will have improved considerably. I'm still finding it a bit tricky to hide the small backstitches I take at the start of each thread, but it's better to have those showing very slightly than to have a poorly-secured line of stitching.

I am now in the middle of marking out the full-scale paper diagram in pencil. I'm about halfway through, and then I go over it in pen (thank goodness for fine line washable pens), and then I have the job of tracing it onto the yellow fabric. I've done lines in a slightly thicker green pen for the outline of the quilt and then criss-crossing the centre, and I will mark the pattern on paper in thinner black pen. I am trying to think my way through how I will mark this onto the fabric.

I assume that the first thing I do, after pressing the fabric (right now I'm leaning away from using spray starch, it makes everything crease like crazy in the quilting frame plus I don't know if it would interact with the pens), is to mark those centre lines on the fabric. I'll probably use one of the slightly thicker markers for that, say in peach, as that should be just dark enough to show but not dark enough that I will mistake it for a sewing line. The sewing lines on the fabric will be done in red, with a fine line washable pen (Crayola) which I've already tested sufficiently to know that it washes out fine.

Then I need to attach the fabric to the paper somehow. The good news here is that I left a good 4" margin all around the design on the paper, so the paper is about the same size as the fabric, and that it fits on top of my piano without having to be folded up. So I can keep it flat between sessions - there's no way I could do the whole thing in one go - right up until it gets basted. That's extra-good news as it spares me having to press the fabric after it's been marked up: I have done tests with ironing over those markers onto scraps and throwing them in the wash, but I'd rather not take the chance if possible. The bad news is that my dining table is rather smaller than this, and only about a quarter of it fits on there at once. So I will need to have that fabric very securely attached at regular intervals, to prevent it from getting pulled out of shape or overly creased. I'm thinking safety pins? With the number I'll need, regular pins would be perpetually pricking me and getting caught in my clothes, and I'm not sure I'd be able to baste comfortably through that paper, especially for the parts where there are two pieces of paper overlapping (it's A1 poster paper, there are four sheets joined by masking tape). I suppose I will have to do this on the floor with weights all over the paper and fabric to keep it in place. Or should I tape both the paper and the fabric onto the floor, as if I were basting? Yikes, it's going to be an enormous job, I always find basting exhausting. Does anyone have helpful suggestions here?

Then I trace the pattern, which should be easy enough, the fabric is a light colour and not too thick; take the fabric off the paper; and make up the quilt sandwich as usual. Hopefully the fabric won't get too creased while I'm marking it up. Keeping it flat on the piano between sessions will help, it's just the part where I'm actually drawing on it and part of it is hanging over the edge of the dining table that I'm wondering about. Ah well, nothing I can do about that, my flat is tiny and we don't have any way of extending the dining table.