Prepping To Quilt

I managed to darken  to my satisfaction the background from the previous post. While much of my work excludes the addition of a border, this piece begs for one.  I have 2 fabrics I'm using... a 2" cotton/metallic gold print as a stopper... then an elaborate "non quilting" fabric for a border.  I long ago picked up this elegant satin/gold metallic holiday fabric for just this piece I knew I would eventually do. Don't you love it when what you need is already in your stash?!

The backing fabric on the outer edges gets turned to the front and pinned so I needn't worry about accidental "turned under backing" getting stitched during the quilting process.  You only need to have made the mistake of not securely keeping the backing fabric edges AWAY from the quilting needle once to start religiously pinning this way.  

This quilting project will be very different from most of my pieces in that 1) I want the painting to tell the story mostly on it's own, and 2) I don't plan to do very dense quilting even in plain areas.  You'll see why as we go on... but bottom line... I've chosen in advance most of the thread I plan to use.
I plan to use monofilament first to secure major areas.  I considered both smoke and clear but ended up using clear only.  I am using a clean bright white (40wt.) on snow and coat background, a dark teal (i.e. matching background) thread as I don't really want the thread to show much, and a Superior Thread "Highlights" Gold (#728) I often use as a forgiving/friendly metallic alternative.

 First effort is with monofilament to simply free motion outline major elements.  You may note I still  pin my quilts as I'm not a big fan of basting glue but for areas when pins don't work as well.. example... the satin/gold border fabric. There I did use basting spray for fear of screwing up the luscious border fabric with pin holes.

I'm not quilting in the added memory drawings so I have simply secured the perimeters around each design. Here I'm merely stitching the edges of the 'coat.'

 After all is 'secured'... all pins are removed allowing much easier quilting with planned decorative threads.