Machine quilting is finished!

Thanks to Judy of Gramma's quilting room for all her encouragement!  I did it! 

I finished machine quilting my friend's quilt.  I did semi circles on all the squares, and then stitch in the ditch along the edges of each block.

I marked the little semi circles with washable blue pens (I've done this many times with hand embroidery) and then wet them thoroughly with cold water to erase them.  In the process, I realized that I can now start to see crinkling.  The picture isn't the greatest because I just dumped the quilt onto the floor and didn't smooth it out at all.  

Here's the quilting from the backside.  I have no idea why it looks blue when it really is white with faint green circles.  The light, I suspect.  At any rate, you can see the quilting.  I don't like heavily quilted pieces; they feel board-like to me.  I want fluid and cuddly, so this should work very well.

Here's another view of the quilt.

So today's job is to buy fabric for the binding.  I'm thinking more blue and yellow, but I'll see.

Sophie, my lovely little machine, does this tie-off thingie where it reinforces the stitching at the beginning and end of each line, and then cuts the threads.  I think I've save hours of tying off and burying threads with this feature.  Yep, this is one wonderful machine.

So now I'm thinking that I'd like to start to learn free motion quilting.  This is not something I've ever been interested in, mostly because I thought it was totally beyond me.  But now I think it's possible.  I reserved some books at the library, and will make up some little quilt sandwiches and see what I can do.