Progress on the Tech quilt

Hello, everyone.

The Tech quilt, as first considered for pin-basting, turned out to have too small of a backing. I added a row of 6 inch blocks with some blue sashing between them, and a blue 2 inch strip along the bottom. This made it big enough that the top can be laid out on the batting and backing without a lot of warping problems popping up.

The area of layout was moved to the tile-floored hallway instead of the carpeted room it had been in. This necessitated creating ways to prevent critters from waltzing through the basting area and tracking dirt on the quilt. There is a door controlling access on one side, but the hallway is open in the other direction. A piece of dog-crate was deployed.

The crate/gate is supported by a chair and the doorway. Note the piece of selvage
wrapped around the blue metal. Wish we'd thought of that when there was a litter of puppies being confined by this method! There were some unfortunate blue marks on doorways after that experience.

 The quilt layers *just* fit into the space by the front door. If I hold onto the stair banister while going around the fabric!

The quilt layers. The backing is being held steady by pieces of
blue painter's tape.

The approximate density of pinning needed to hold all the layers stable while
machine quilting the layers together. 

The quilting has begun but there are no pictures really of the progress. I have learned that using the sewing machine's blanket stitch on the elephant is a complete failure. (Too smart by half.) Had to rip all of those stitches out! Like they say, Keep It Simple Stupid.