Quilting...with chenille?

I'm making a baby blanket for one of my friends, and I wanted to back the blanket with chenille.  The front is either going to be regular quilting cotton or cotton flannel, or some combination. 

I wanted to do some free motion quilting, but I'm not sure how to go about it with the chenille backing.  I'm still a novice when it comes to free motion quilting, so I'm hoping this isn't beyond my capabilities.  I know chenille shifts more than cotton, and most tutorials I've read suggest using a walking foot--obviously not the foot for free motion.  Is it doable?  Or should I quilt the top separately and then proceed to add the chenille?  Or do I just use bigger motions?  Help!

I've seen it done where the top and batting are quilted together and the backing put on after before binding.  I'm not sure how it's kept in place...maybe it's just tacked at different places?

I would suggest taking a small amount of your fabrics and layer them with the batting and practice.  Practice what you want to do to see if it is indeed doable.

So, I can't help with your free motion question, sorry, but I can pass along a bit of advice about working with chenile.

I just finished a chenile quilt for my future grandson.  Chenile top and chenile backing.  And add batting to that and it is thick!

WOW, what a difficult quilt!  I have been sewing for years and have never taken out so many stitches.

I was fortunate enough to be given a walking foot and was able to 'finally' finish the quilt.  Love the walking foot....

If you do the top and batting and free motion, how do you plan to attach the back to make it secure?

You can look at my blog if you would like to see my finished chenile quilt....my first and last quilt out of chenile. 

Hm, well, if I quilt the top first, I'd probably just hope the topstitching after sewing the front and back together would be enough to keep the blanket secure.  It's a baby blanket so I'm hoping it's small enough to get away with it?  I've seen some that are tied, but I don't have enough seams in my design to hide them. 

Another thing I was thinking was to skip the batting between the front and chenille.  I've read chenille is pretty thick and I don't want the blanket to be *too* heavy.  I am in California. 

I did get my fabric today and I bought extra for practice.  Hopefully it works out.  I'm hoping to get this blanket done in a week or so, so I'll have an update soon! 

Any other tips greatly appreciated!

I'm planning to make  2 baby quilts just like this starting tomorrow! Oh Fransson does this and has a pattern for sale on her etsy site. My friend bought the pattern which I read over at her place and it's cute and very explanitory. Basically, you make your quilt top, place it over your batting and pin together. She free motion quilts it with the batting down. (she pre-washes everything) Then she places the minky/chenille or whatever backing fabric on and trims it out, bias stitches it and binds it together. The pattern is only $10 and can be found herehttp://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=21925240.  I'm not following the front of the pattern at all and not doing the free motion but a diaganol stitch instead. She also hand binds whereas I'll machine. It can be done! Good luck! Can't wait to see yours you'll have to post!

I am planning to make the same kind of blanket.  Since it is a baby sized quilt, I am planning to quilt only the one side and I hope that the top stitching around the edge will be enough to hold the chenille in place.  I haven't tried it yet though, so I can't verify for certain that this will work, but it seems like it should.

Well, I decided to just quilt the top, mostly because I was too lazy to try and see how quilting the chenille would be.  I just finished quilting and now I'm debating whether or not I want to use binding.  The chenille I got was from JoAnn's and it's the vertical "striped" (http://www.joann.com/joann/catalog.jsp?CATID=cat2969&PRODID=prd7097) one.  I'm debating if I want to stitch in the ditch across one line (yes, there is one ditch that runs the entire length of the quilt) to secure the front and back.  I'm afraid the line will show up crooked in the back...

To tack the chenille on, rather than messing with stitching in the ditch and worrying about the line showing up where it shouldn't, I recommend doing a few teeny tiny diamonds around the surface of the quilt through all 3 layers.  If you do maybe 9 to 16 (3 x 3 or 4 x 4)of these the chenille should stay in place just fine.  You can use your walking foot for this since it's a baby quilt.  Take two stitches, pivot 90 degrees, another 2 stitches, pivot and so on until your little diamond has 4 sides.

re: the binding, no opinion there!

I finished the quilt!  Kinda.

I decided to not use binding and just flip the quilt right side out instead.  It came out pretty cute but it looks like I didn't get the chenille laid out flat enough in the back, so there's some "rumpling" in the back, if you know what I mean.  I'm undecided what to do.  I don't know if there's anything I can really do. 

I did do some stitch in ditch, and thankfully it didn't show up very much in the back.  I'll try to post some pictures tonight so you all can get a better idea of what I'm fretting over.  I didn't sew all the way across though (ugh, the bunching), so one side of the quilt seems kinda bunched...I'm thinking of taking it out and redoing it, although with all that's going on now with the chenille seeming a little big, is it wise to redo it?  The quilt is 45" across and I was thinking of just redoing the stitch-in-ditch maybe 25" across the center?  Does that make sense?  Will that help balance out the bunching?  Anyone have any better ideas?

Have any of you who have worked with chenille had trouble sewing through it?  When I was stitching the front and back together, I had to resort to a heavier duty needle (I used a leather one since I didn't have a denim needle on hand) and even then I still had to use my hand crank.  Ugh. 

Update:

Here's some photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amatricis/3363642213/in/pool-sewmamagroup
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amatricis/3364462992/in/pool-sewmamagroup
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amatricis/3364462198/in/pool-sewmamagroup

You can see in the second picture on the lower corner where I have the back side folded over the slight bunching of the chenille since it's a bit big for some reason.  I'm still not sure how that happened since I laid the layers flat and pinned as if I was making a quilt sandwich.  It's not *too* bad...I guess I'm just a perfectionist...

How does the yellow bar across the middle look?  I haven't taken out the stitch in ditch or changed it in anyway, so it starts from one side and goes all the way until about 5" to the other side.  Does it look too bunchy?  Can I make it better?