Antique Quilt — Part Two

Yesterday I managed to get the batting secured between the new layers.  To do this, I had to remove all the rotting fabric and secure it with basting spray between two thin (Request weight) battings.  That makes this now a five layer work.

1 backing

2 QD Cotton Request batting

3 Antique carded wool

4 QD Cotton Request batting

5 New Quilt Top

Having been able to completely secure this sandwich on the longarm, and baste down the sides to hold in place, I left the day with the quilt looking like this:

This left me with the hope of not having to either hand quilt (big stitch) or tie this quilt, but that possibly I could do a large meander on the longarm to secure all the layers.

This morning I started and soon realized this wasn’t going to work.  While I had most of the carded wool batting thinned smooth, not all of it was able to be smoothed out, leaving lumps of batting in it.

I made it this far before giving up as a bad option for securing layers:

The puckering is unacceptable.  The stitch length is unacceptable as I try to maneuver around the biggest lumps.  But the biggest problem is the thickness.  Even with my hopping foot at the highest setting, and a size 21 needle, the machine was bogging down.
The quilt sandwich is now on my work table, to have this small amount of quilting removed, and in preparation of hand tying.

Now I’m concerned with attaching the batting to the edges of this………. the adventure continues!