Remember this quilt? I haven’t worked on it in a while, thought it has been on the list for awhile. Working on it what I did on the weekend when I wasn’t at the races (wearing a big hat like I was at Ascot or something), doing laundry or answering one of the 1000 questions I get asked when I am at home.
I also don’t think I wrote much about it. The first time I wrote about the piece, it seems like it was in a very embryonic stage. The last time I wrote about that piece, the top was done. Hhhmm. Talk about quick projects.
The project has been on my mind. I got a bug in my ear to quilt it myself and that was sitting in the back of my mind taunting me. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me. I wanted to get it done during these two weeks (last week and this week), because I was off work and I could devote some serious time to quilting.
Because this quilt didn’t have a border and I didn’t think the design called for one, I put on what I call a ‘quilting border’. A quilting border gives me something to cut off when I am squaring up the quilt and don’t want to chop of points or parts of the design for a piece that didn’t end up quite square. I learned to do this after chopping off points and designs on the Punk Rock Quilt. the only tricky part is to make sure you cut off enough so that the edge will be completely covered by the binding.
First, I quilted straight-ish lines in all of the orange wonky 9 patches. I used Aurifil #2145 for the orange blocks. I didn’t intentionally follow any lines or do any in the ditch quilting, except when I was trying to get from one part of the block to another. I did try and keep the three lines in each block about the same distance away from each other. However, sometimes I veered off track a little to make sure that there was a relatively even amount of quilting in each area. I also wanted the quilt to drape so that was another reason not to quilt too densely. That went pretty well and I didn’t see any puckers on the back. I quilted all of the orange blocks in a few hours on one afternoon.
After the orange blocks, came the hard part. Shockingly, I had an idea for the plain block quilting as well. I found a vaguely Celtic design that would work for my idea. I wanted it to be round, but all of the round designs I found were too complicated. I used Paint to enlarge the design.
I also didn’t want the design to scream out at viewers, so I used a companion color to the blue fabric (FYI: Aurifil #2740). I also used a walking foot on all of the quilting. I don’t usually do that, but it worked pretty well in keeping the puckers down.
I used Saral paper and a Sewline pencil to transfer the design. I really use the Saral paper. I don’t think there is much of the yellow left. I used the Sewline to fill in when the Saral rubbed off and I wasn’t finished quilting.
I quilted a couple of the plain blocks and figured out how to stop and start only once, assuming all went well. Not all of the blocks are perfect but, as Frances says, the Muggles won’t know. I think the overall impact is pretty striking.
One thing I wish I had done was use orange in the bobbin on the plain blocks. As it stands the blue quilting really stands out on the back.
Looks great! I love the design on the blue!
Thanks! Sometimes inspiration striking is a good thing.
I went back to look at the whole top. Love the really strong grid pattern you’ve got going on and I think you would have lost that with a border. Good idea about the ‘quilting border’. Looks great.
Thanks for going back to take a look. What did you think of my inspiration? I’ll post the finished piece as soon as I finish the binding, so you can see the current view.