Monofiliment Thread and Little Hooter

Firstly, I am not a thread expert; I am entirely self-taught, and I grew up on a farm, so I never give up and make do with what I've got. 

I have been playing around with monofilament thread for a long time, but recently I have been trying to zero in on what really works for me.  I've tried a couple of brands over the years, and lately I've been testing two with more rigour.  You can watch the video on YouTube here:

Little Hooter Video

The quilt I'm working on was made by Joan, and she did a darn near perfect job with her paper piecing.  She was planning to hang this little quilt on the wall, so we decided to go all out with the quilting and add as much detail as possible.  

I knew I needed to use monofilament thread; I really wanted just the texture of the quilting to show, not the thread.  My usual thread is Glide 40wt, which is a showy thread 😁.  I did some testing, and honestly, I didn't even bother with a video or photos.  I put Maderia monofilament against Fil-Tec's Glide monofilament, and it wasn't even a contest.  Maderia just gummed up the needle after a very short amount of time; it did stitch and didn't break too much, but the gummyness made the thread unusable in my opinion.  I know there are other threads out there, but the hassle of hunting them down and going through all the motions when I have a perfectly good thread in my hands just seems silly.  I am not sponsored by Glide, by the way.  I sum up my thoughts pretty well in the video, but here are some bullet points:

• Glide Monofilament comes in 2 colours: clear and smoky; I used both. 
• I used Glide 40wt in my bobbin in a colour that matched my backing
• I used 2 layers of 80/20
• 12 Stitches per inch
• Stitch regulated mode
• Needle was a 14
• Tension adjustments periodically
• I did have more thread breaks more often than usual

Here are some photos of my plan.

I stuck pretty close to the plan.  But I did change one thing after I finished quilting.... The eyes.

I like the after much better.  Here are the closer photos 

If you are wondering how I came up with this design... it was tenacity.  These quilts are HARD to design.  But don't feel like you have to add this much detail to them; the piecing is pretty impressive already, and we don't all have to be extra like Joan 😁.  BTW, thanks, Joan. I really did enjoy figuring this out, and stitching it was a joy once I had a plan.