Quilting Has Begun on the New York Beauty Quilt

Today I got the rest of the New York Beauty quilt loaded on my frame (the backing was loaded last night), and the top narrow border quilted.  Teensy and Tiger are helping.

While I loaded the backing on my 12' frame, I put this huge pile of batting -- 120" x 120" -- over in the corner.  Tiger found it, and happily waded in.

He turned around two or three times, and then laid down and snuggled right in.

"Ahhhh... feels sooo good..."

"Could you quit bothering me, please?"

"Well, alrighty then; I'll just hide my face."

In the meanwhile, Teensy came in, saw that Tiger had already snagged the prized spot in the middle of the batting; so, in a little fit of pique, he leaped up onto the cutting table and went to sit behind my computer speakers.  He got his foot caught in the thread and totally unthreaded my sewing machine in the process.

"I'm not doin' a thing.  Just sniffin' this stuffed pup here..."

"La la la; I can't seeeee you!"

"Okay, I'm outa here."

"I wonder if I could weasel my way into this stack of fabric?"

"On the other hand, this fleece jacket is pretty cuddly..."

Sidetracked by Tiger repositioning himself in the batting.  

Putting the quilt on the frame...

Here are some of my best souvenirs from our vacation to Creede, Colorado:  strong, rubber-tipped Bessey clamps for my quilting frame.  The ones that came on it had plastic tips, and they not only didn't hold fabric or that red cord on the side clamps very well, they were also crumbling away.  I found these in the Creede True Value General Store while Larry was hunting down fittings for a water line on the camper.

The backing is 129" x 129".  That leaves only 7.5" at each end of my 12-foot frame.

I no sooner got the batting loaded on the frame than Teensy snuggled up in the part that hangs underneath the frame.

Look at his ears.  Can you tell I'm bugging him?

And... the quilting begins!

I requested that Teensy kindly remove himself from the batting, as he was in my way; so he migrated to the rag rug.

Tiger immediately spotted the vacancy in the batting, and promptly moved in.

Once again, here's the diagram of the quilt from my EQ8 program.