Halloween Quilting

This wonderful design is from Jedi Craft Girl, although I ended up sketching my own tree.  And for several uninteresting reasons, I also made it a bit smaller.

I was determined to get this up over the mantle by the middle of the month, so that meant machine quilting, never my forte.  After quilting around the tree and cat, I opted to stipple-quilt the background.  On the one hand, it does a great job of making the moon, tree, and cat pop and it adds a lovely texture.  On the other hand, I suck at it, which is frustrating.  Some of it simply has to do with practice -- this part, done towards the beginning, is not great:

The stitches run from tiny to enormous, and there are weird lines and cross-overs where I lost control of the rhythm. But other sections are much better:

But then there is my inability to properly baste a quilt, which leads to unsightly puckering:

And then there is this lovely spot on the back in a corner, the result of trying to rush through before my kids came home, and discovered too late to fix:

Bad for quilting, but kind of a neat effect

Finished is better than perfect, and it's not like I'd ever submit this for judging, but it is still disappointing.  Some things I do very, very well, and others ... not so much.