Finished Quilting, But Oh Woe is the Thread

I finished up the quilting on the four hibiscus series quilts.  I will feature them individually in photos after they're bound.  I used mostly Aurifil threads -- the 50 weight spools -- for the leaves, flowers and beetle.

I had a lot of trouble with the background quilting.  I used some thicker threads and had skipped stitches, broken needles, and nests on the backside.  Not to mention the fraying -- arrrrggghhh!

I tried a series of different needles -- some worked better than others -- none was great.  The best was the 90/14 topstitch needle.  With a bit of silicon dripped over the eye.

But I still had trouble with fraying.  And I used threads from both YLI and Superior.

I've used the Superior King Tut a lot for quilting and this spool has been in my stash for a while -- it's not really old, but it's not brand new.  I was a bit horrified to see this little glob of fiber when I opened up the top to see what the spool was doing.  My LQS was happy to replace it, but they didn't have any in this same color; so it's on order and I just finished up using the rest of this spool... after I cut out the wee glob.

And here are the backsides of two of them.  I was sick of shopping in my stash and trying to decide which of my precious fabrics would be ok to "waste" on the back of my quilts.  So I went to my local Mega Fabric and Junk Store and purchased a bolt of inexpensive cotton that was a bit thicker than the stuff I use for piecing and my experiments.  I used a coupon, so it was pretty cheap.  I dyed the whole thing with leftover dyes and wound it back on the cardboard.  So now I have some special backing fabric that won't be "wasted" on the back.  And all that color hides anything I might want to keep quiet.