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I decided to make a second quilt with a cotton-batting for the summer.

I had collected lots of batik-FQs in beautiful colours over the last months. I wanted to mix them with a silvergray batik, but I couldn't find one. So I chose a gray fabric with silver printed on it. We'll see how it holds the silver after washing.

I always wanted to sew the Jacob's Ladder-pattern. I made almost each of the 40 blocks in another color mixed with silvergray. That added up to 200 4-patches and 160 halfsquare-triangles – quite a pile!

I tried several arrangements for the 40 blocks, there were so many colours! This is the final result, after spray-basting:

Everything went fine until that point.
After the desaster with FMQ at Ukraine 7 I really wanted to FMQ this quilt with my new Pfaff machine! It was only a thin cotton-batting - so I thought.

But I hadn't thought about the batic fabric and the new yarn.

Until now I always had used Mettler machine-quilting-yarn (cotton), sometimes Nylon for the upper thread.
Since my quilt lessons at Regina Grewe the FMQ always was beautiful.

Now I wanted to try new yarn,  Superior thread. SoFine as upper thread, Bottom Line for the bobbing.
Bottom Line has the extra advantage that it's very thin, so the bobbin holds a huge length. And the bobbins that came with the new drop-in-Pfaff are bigger than the old bobbins anyway.

Superior thread recommends these threads in this combination especially for quilting.

Hmmmyes.

I tried FMQ on a little sandwich, everything went smooth and the swirls were beautiful.

I changed to the quilt and the upper thread broke. I fixed it, sewed the next swirl - it broke again.

And again. And again. And again. I checked everything several times, nothing worked. The only thing different from the sandwich was the fabric. My sandwiches are made of KONA cotton. This quilt is made 50% of that silver print, 50 % of batics.

Could that be the reason? I can't think of anything else. I searched in the internet, everybody says that it's difficult to use batics for handquilting or FMQ. Handquilting I know already, my ice-quilt is made of several batics and I still handquilt it (but at least 3/4 is done now).
It seems that FMQ is too difficult for newbies like me - only professionals like Debbie Clarke can do it! Here quilted feathers on batic fabrics are so beautiful!!

I still don't know if the batic or the yarn was the problem. We'll know after next FMQ-quilt!

I was brave and finished the quilt with FMQ. It took me two evenings to bury all the extra thread-tails. And whenever I touch the quilt I still find some tails. I don't know how often that thread broke!

At least the thread is so thin, you can barely see the places where it broke.

I quilted leaves on the border, I love them so much.