summer serenade part 6

I like to use a wool/poly blend batting for quilting.  I like the loft it gives and the fact that it has a bit of body to it.  I pin basted the layers of the quilt together using the same cream fabric on the back as I used on the front.  I was a bit hesitant because it would show every wobble in the quilting stitches but then I thought "just go for it".

The first quilting I did was four long wavy lines in red thread just on the edge of the coloured areas where they border the cream section.  I didn't do the pebbles until later though.  I didn't mark the lines on the fabric.  I made up a freezer paper template.  I didn't want to tear off a piece of freezer paper that long, so cut off a 16" piece then cut that into 4 strips, overlapped the ends and dabbed them with the iron to stick them together.

Next was the flowers.  This is the flower motif I quilted in the coloured areas of the quilt.  I cut the circles for the flower centres out of freezer paper and ironed them to the quilt top.  I quilted around them then removed them before finishing the flower petals.

I enlarged the outline of the flower motif to quilt behind the quiltlets, the same as I did in the play piece.  I drew the outline on greaseproof paper with water-soluble pen then pinned the paper to the quilt top and quilted through the paper.  It's easy to tear off the paper although I had to just scratch over the top of a few little bits that got caught under the stitches.  To mark the cross hatching design I used painters tape.  It's really low-tack tape and doesn't leave any residue.  It can be used several times before it runs out of 'stickability'.

I drew out several different ideas for the background of the cream section then quilted them out on a scrap quilt sandwich, using dark thread just so I could see it a little easier.

While I would have liked to do the mctavishing, it was going to be just too difficult to see.  It might be easier to do mini mctavishing on the longarm machine but I haven't tried it yet.  I did some little swirly quilting and decided to add a few areas of straight lines to add a bit of interest.  The two photos below are before and after adding microstippling to make the checkerboard design in the flower outline.

I decided to do some quilting on the purple quiltlets as they bagged out a bit without it.  I used a single strand of embroidery thread to quilt around the main elements in the flowers and echo quilting in the background.

Next post - the final product!

summer serenade part 3

In my initial quilt sketch there were seven little quiltlets but when it came time to actually start making the quilt, it seemed to only want five otherwise it looked way too crowded.

I wanted the quilting and the embroidery on the quiltlets to basically follow the same flower design so that the quiltlets would be integrated into the background.  I sketched the full flower for the quilting and variations of a partial flower for the embroidery.

I spent some time one day putting down a few ideas for the quilting.  I like the look of this design but changed it a bit from this sketch.  I found it quite valuable to just sit down with pencil and paper and rough out a few ideas - basically just doodling.

This was the trial of the embroidery on the quiltlets.  I grabbed this piece of dark purple fabric out of the scrap box but the fabric I actually used was not as dark as this one.  I was quite happy with the design so went ahead and made all of them plus an extra one just in case.

Here they are - don't they look good?

Mulling over some more quilting ideas, I drew up some of them on greaseproof paper.  I liked the look of this one so decided to go with it.

Expanding on the quilting design a bit.  When we had our bathroom renovated, I kept the glass out of the shower cubicle to use in my studio.  Not only is it great to put on top of my trestle table to paint fabric on, but it is BRILLIANT to lay on top of quilt tops and draw quilting designs with white board markers which just wipe off when I've finished with them!