Woodblock quilt progress

I've made some progress on Hamish's wood block quilt. It's been slow going because I spent most of the weekend curl-up-in-bed sick and my strength isn't back yet. But now I'm moving again, so without further ado here are the areas of progress:

First, I finished the starburst patchwork on the back by adding a fourth ring (the largest pieced circle ever) and four more arcs to fill in the corners of the square.

For batting, I decided to use the Quilter's Dream Wool and the Hobbs 80/20. I also bought the Hobbs Thermore synthetic batting, but I just didn't like the way it felt for this quilt, especially with the wool.

Next, I started quilting. Boy is this a tough one to quilt. In the best circumstances it's tricky to quilt a queen-sized blanket on my little machine. But the high-loft wool plus another batting layer creates some substantial bulk. It's hard just to move the thing around, especially rolled up under the machine arm. And it's hard to machine-quilt high-loft blankets without getting fabric puckers on the backing. You can see the sloppy remains of many ripped quilting lines along the edge of the blanket in the picture above.

Finally, needing a break from the quilting wrestling match, I made the binding tape. I had purchased a different print for the binding, but it just wasn't right. I thought it would go with the woodblock prints in color and style, but in the end it failed on both accounts. So I went with the darkest blue print that forms the heart of the medallion on the front of the quilt. It's going to look great.