I just finished the quilting on the Circle quilt. Not surprisingly, yet kind of cool, it turned out exactly like the mini mock up I made. It was quite fun to do the radiating lines with the walking foot, especially once I got the hang of lining up the painter's tape. I took things slowly (as recommended by Jacquie Gering) and each line came out with beautiful, even stitches in a nice straight line.
Painter's tape is probably my new favourite quilting tool. I never had much success with it before but now I realize it wasn't the tape per se, it was the width of the tape. I have used 1" tape before and I had 
a lot of trouble with it not sticking and peeling off mid-stitching line. That is totally frustrating and I gave up using it, choosing other designs to quilt instead. With this wider 1-38" tape there were no issues at all and it stuck to the quilt perfectly. I used a dry wall square extended with my quilting ruler to line up the radiating lines 6" apart from the focal point(s) in the corner. I did one side first and then the other. I used a lot of painter's tape but I didn't want to risk any shifting. I will definitely be using the tape for other designs in the future - I just have to buy more to keep in stock!
I'm fortunate to have a patch of floor where I could lay out the quilt after quilting each line in order to reposition the tape. It was a little hard on my knees but I got faster as I went along and although a little tedious, it wasn't so bad. Quilting the lines was easy but I wouldn't want to do it on a quilt too much larger. My 1600P has a pretty large harp space and I rearranged my folding tables so that the quilt had a lot of support on all sides. It worked really well and I'm so happy I can move things around to make the space work for each machine and project.
Now I only need to trim the edges and bind the quilt. Thinking ahead to the washing stage I figured with the Batik fabrics I should test for colour fastness. I have used the fabrics before but on the Lady Liberty Embroidered Quilt, a wall hanging that wasn't ever washed. I started to get out the bins to cut up some swatches when I realized that I had my mini mock up made of the exact fabrics (and white background) of the quilt. That little test piece has really proven to be a valuable project! I immersed it in water and Soak (my intended detergent) and let it sit for half an hour. I was thrilled to see that it didn't run or bleed at all and I'm confident there will be no problems with the real quilt. I'll definitely add some Color Catchers for insurance though.
Although my binding is ready and waiting I think I will go ahead and quilt the next two quilts first (that is, the Piece of Cake II and the Down the Foxhole improv). With the machine and tables set up for quilting it would be a shame to move it all to finish the Circle quilt and then have to put it all back.
It's a little difficult to see in the pictures but here are some photos of the finished walking foot quilting.
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