In a Spiral {Quilting My Alison Glass Sampler}

After sitting on my shelf for over a year, getting moved in January, and then sitting on the shelf for another 4 months, I have finally started quilting my original QCQAL sampler quilt. This was my second quilt along all the way back in 2014. I finished the top in 2015, and am just now getting to quilt this quilt. Here's a picture from when I put the top together originally:

The background is Kona Champagne and the fabrics originally came from a fat quarter of Clover Sunshine that I won from a now-defunct blog.

My plan for quilting this quilt was to quilt 25 spirals -- one centered in each block -- instead of one gigantic spiral so that I would be able to FMQ all of the spirals instead of having to use my walking foot (I hate my walking foot -- but that is a conversation for another day.)

Instead of pinning the whole quilt, I started off only quilting the center block and one block on either side. I always run into issues when FMQ-ing with my backing shifting, so I decided to not even fight it this time around, and just deal with pinning each section as I move through the quilt.

As of now, I have 7 of my 25 spirals completed. Here are pictures of the first four spirals that I did:

Side note: because the background is champagne but my backing fabric is white, I'm using a very light tan thread on the front and white thread in the bobbin. I have had to be kind of neurotic about making sure that I use the right thread in both places!

I'm almost done with the center nine blocks which means the hardest part of this process is nearly over! Even just moving from the center block to the inner ring was a huge improvement as far as bulk and quilt movement goes!

Cheers to pushing things ever so slightly closer to the finish line!

Sharing at NTT!