Shock Waves - Just the Back :)

In my last post I showed you the corner of the back of my latest quilt, Shock Waves. It is now finished, washed and blocked :) I'm only showing pictures of the back as the front is a pattern that I tested and I won't be able to do a full reveal until my day on the hop - April 7th is my day, make sure to come back and check out the front of the quilt! Yes, I am giving this pattern a HUGE thumbs up! :) It is extremely well written and the resulting quilt is amazing! Come back on April 7th, I just know you are going to agree!

OK, on to pictures. After the pictures, I'm going to share what I learned while quilting this quilt. The lessons were many and since the final reveal will be more about the pattern than the quilting, I thought this would be the perfect time to share them with you. But first, the pictures!!

My husband had a huge role in the quilting design for this quilt. He saw shock waves in the piecing and began searching for inspiration for me to translate to the quilting. I was the lucky recipient of lots of information regarding flow studies, jet propulsion, engineering, theories and the like (lots of head nodding and smiling like I understood every not one word. . .). I told you, he really got into it!! I started with the middle motif for the quilt. It is called Sacred Geometry. If you do an images search for this, you will see some very cool images. I picked this one to use as my motif. 

My first lesson. Light tables are all kinds of awesome when transferring an image you want to use as a motif to your quilt! I bought one after Cindy Needham's class. I just knew it would come in handy and it did! Drawing the motif onto the quilt took very little time or effort. This has opened up a whole new world of possible quilting designs!

Second lesson, I marked the design with an air erasable purple marker late one night and then went to bed. . . it was gone in the morning!! Alrighty then! Apparently the time it takes to disappear depends on temperature and humidity. I'm in the desert, no humidity. I'm just guessing that is the reason it disappeared so fast. Lesson, I will only use these pens for marking on the fly. . . mark, quilt. Marks gone.

The third lesson had to do with curved rulers - there is a LOT of straight and curved ruler work in this quilt. Anyway, when using the curved ruler, it was much easier for me to control when I used the inside curve of the ruler! I had much less ruler movement as I found I was able to stabilize the ruler better from the outside curve. My consecutive curves got a LOT more consistent, and that makes me smile :)

I'm not sure when this one hit me, but it was pretty soon after I started quilting - a heavily pieced back is going to cause some issues when quilting this dense. . . you are thinking, well duh! LOL There were several places where the seams on the back came together exactly where multiple seams on the front came together. One is not going to be aware of what is coming up on the back . . . because it takes a little lot more to get that through the needle, I had some, ok, ok a lot, of inconsistent stitches in those areas. Some real small, some real big and when I was using the ruler and this happened, there was NO way I could keep the line straight. . . . And no, for the most part I did not rip them out. SO, in the future if the plan is to quilt densely (and let's be honest, this is probably going to be the plan for the foreseeable future lol), the back needs to have a lot fewer seams - or at a minimum, no seam intersections.

I tried trupunto for the first time!! I have to say, it worked out well :) I put an extra layer of batting in both the big triangle and the smaller triangle right under it. I didn't have any water soluble thread so I used a poly thread with the biggest stitch my machine would make. It actually worked out well. I removed the thread right before I quilted the triangle. Both threads came out easily and because I stitched it right after removing it, I did not experience any shifting. . . I might have gotten lucky! 

This is the first time that the quilting designs just kind of flowed . . . I didn't have specific ideas of what I was going to use as fillers before I started. It probably had to do with the conversations I had with my husband before starting quilting but the designs kind of just flowed as I quilted. That was kind of cool! Hmmm, there is something to be said about having a theme when quilting by the seat of your pants ;)

And finally, sometimes random takes some planning :) My husband picked the outside border quilting design from Christina Cameli's book Step by Step Free Motion Quilting (love this book!). It is called Port Holes. I wanted to have varying sizes and I knew if I wanted larger circles and had any hope of them being even remotely circular shaped, I would have to mark it. I used one of those circle templates that has multiple sized circles on it. I think they are used for architectural drawing. Anyway, I pulled out my air erasable marking pen and filled in the circles from the corner to the center, quilted, marked, quilted repeat repeat - you get the idea :) This worked out well and the resulting texture is nothing short of amazing. Did it take longer? Yes. Was it worth it? I totally think so :)

One more tip, I am not fond of burying threads and I'll admit I do just clip them on occasion (Yes, more than I'd like to admit). I watched this video - changed my life!! I might be the last one to the party on this but holy wow people! If you did know this, why didn't you tell me??? LOL

When I was sewing on the binding, my machine stopped stitching. . . like needle going up and down, feed dogs and walking foot functioning properly and stitches are not happening. . . Seriously?? Panic ensued. I called the shop, Joan assured me that I could come in the next morning and finish the quilt on one of the machines. That morning I went in and saw the repair guy, begged him to fix my machine. . . he was swamped. There were TONS of machines sitting around him :( I explained the issue and he said it sounded like I had knocked the timing out. . . moi??? ;) He said he would have it back to me the next day (today). Then, I ran to the other store where Joan works and sewed on the binding :D And. . .  Good news! Ken delivered on his promise and I have my machine back!! And it works! YAY :D 

Working on the Oakshott top. . . will be sharing the finished flimsy soon :) Will start quilting the rose linen tomorrow or Monday. Seriously stoked!! :) I'll be posting lots of updates on that one :)

Linking up with I Quilt over at Pretty Bobbins and DWM over at Patchwork Times. Check out what is happening with all of the creative people linking up!

Until next time, keep on quilting!!