An orange QOV

Here's the first of three QOV's from my QOV partner in CA. who loves batiks, I quilted it today with my new favorite free hand overall design, the Greek key sort of motif.

I have quite a few spools of Valdani variegated thread & one looked just right on this fabric so I decided to use it but I had a bit of a struggle getting the tension right. The thread doesn't come off the spool very smoothly so I tried a couple of different thread paths, a thread sock, liquid silicon & several bobbin tension adjustments before I found an acceptable combination. Valdani threads are very nice & I would like to put these to use but they seem to be a challenge for me to use on the longarm & I spent a long time today trial & error until I got it right. I find it very frustrating to be making thread adjustments when I could be quilting. I used the solid orange in the bobbin.
The backing was already pieced but it was just short of the needed size so I pulled out a yard from my stash that blended really well & sewed it on one side of the backing, that's another yard out of my stash!
I loaded a second QOV on the longarm tonight, hoping to get that quilted tomorrow.