Works in progress - Quilt-as-you-go

I've got three quilt-as-you-go bed quilts under construction at the moment.  The first is Tula Pink-heavy and I'm quilting it onto strips the width of the finished quilt.  Each full-width strip is two blocks wide. I'm using irregular straight lines so that when the strips are sewn together I won't have the added worry of matching the lines of quilting.

The second and third quilts are twins.  A total of 84 machine appliqued blocks go to make these babies.

I've done all the appliques and have started the mammoth task of quilting each one onto it's batting square.

First I pin the block onto it's batting to stop it moving around.  Compared to basting an entire quilt sandwich this is easy peasey lemon squeesey.

The beauty of quilt-as-you-go is that a) each individual square is sooo much easier to handle than an entire quilt, and b) that I can undertake machine quilting that I would never be able to attempt on my cheap and cheerful domestic machine - for example this pictorial quilting:

It's so easy to stop in the middle of the block, pull your threads through to the back of the wadding and tie them together say in the knowledge that no one will see the knot once the backing is in place!

I've also been able to play with echo quilting:

And with lines that do not cross the applique:

I've had all sorts of fun!

The Tula quilt will be finished soon (hopefully) whereas the applique quilts will be with me for quite a while longer.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday on freshlypieced.com.