Update on (somewhat!) ill-fated T-shirt quilt and question Sewing Machines Parts and Sales in Los Angeles

Hey guys! I cannot thank y’all enough for all your responses to my original post, it really helped me feel more confident about my project. Obviously I am very far behind and will not finish this by Christmas, but I wanted to update my progress with y’all as well as ask a question.

So, I am going for the applique(ish)/top-stitching onto an old sheet idea. I may have spazzedly over-estimated the amount of non-lining up of my squares but I think the real problem is as I get toward the middle/end the crookedness is what will start to show and throw things off but I’m just gonna deal with it as it comes! I followed suggestions to essentially frame it out by laying down an outermost edge and working in from there, I’m basically just trying to orient them in line with one-another. As you can see there is a certain amount of bunching and lack of smoothness happening lol but I am really rather unconcerned with it, this is kind of an experiment and I know by brother will not care. As long as the thing’s intact and durable I will be happy!

Here’s what I got so far.

But I have just noticed something that is making me extremely uneasy. So I am top-stitching using a zig-zag stitch not for stretch but because I like the way it looks, like a faux-serger type of deal. As always when I sew I lock in my stitch at beginning and end by backstepping a few stitches, which has always worked in the past. But I am noticing them coming undone!! Here is a video I made to show what is happening.

What do I do? Am I doing something wrong? I am really upset by this, I want this quilt to be durable and I feel like the squares will start to peel up at the corners if this keeps up.

Thanks again folks. This is quickly becoming my favorite sub 😀