Friday, June 3, 2016

CiL Quilting - Another Finish

Another Friday, another finish!

Remember this quilt Kat sent to me to quilt for her Covered In Love project?
Well it is now quilted and most likely when you are reading this, it will be winging its way back to her! When Kat asked me to quilt this one (the blocks were made by Kat's bee mates at do. Good Stitches), my initial reaction was "Heck yes!" . . . and then I got the top. Holy moly people! This top is truly spectacular! I admit, I was a little scared to start! But start I did! I'm going to totally photobomb you and then I'm going to tell you about how I came to my quilting choices. Ready? Here we go!

My absolute favorite block :) 
And the back.
The shadows from the slated part of the patio cover. I probably should have waited until morning to take pictures but I was way too excited!!
 I just love this quilt! Kat and her Bee Mates did a spectacular job on the blocks, they were all beautifully done!

The quilt lived on my design wall for well over a week (I'm thinking more like two) while I finished up a couple of projects. When I first saw the top, my immediate thought was to go crazy with the free motion quilting like I did on the Blaze pattern test quilt or on Purple Haze. And then I got to thinking and bouncing ideas off of Sandra. The stars of this quilt are very obviously the paper pieced blocks. I didn't want the quilting to compete. And then I started looking at some of my quilting books and of course online. I was looking through Christina Cameli's book "Step by Step Free Motion Quilting" and hatched a plan. Wavy lines with a twist. Throw in a motif here and there to add interest. . . I let that percolate a little and drew it out on some easel paper. I put it next to the quilt top and asked my ultimate quilting advisor (otherwise known as my husband LOL) which he thought, flow or wavy lines. I think you know which he picked :)

I have come to love the wavy lines! Throwing in a motif here and there adds some interest and it totally keeps me from getting bored! haha

But lets go back to the beginning. The first thing I did was to ditch around all of the paper pieced blocks with a clear monopoly thread. Then I decided to do crosshatching in the blue zig zag. But, instead of the crosshatch lines following the block lines, I did on the vertical but on the horizontal lines I ran them perpendicular to the angle of the zigzag. If you look, you can see that this basically made for a more flattened diamond shape. Because the flower was kind of a part of the zigzag I decided to extend the crosshatching to the flower block as well.

OK, now to the end. A couple of those little critters really needed eyes. I debated with myself, and with Sandra on how to add them. I thought about applique. I didn't go with applique because I didn't want to hit the wool batting with an iron. . . I've said it before and I'll say it again, wool batting and irons do not play well together. I watched Youtube videos. I searched the internet. And then I decided to bite the bullet and dust off my very rusty embroidery skills :) I was initially going to use an 8 wt thread but that did not go so well. I could not get the knots to bury and there was no way I was going to risk putting a hole in the quilt. So I tried some black Aurifil 12 wt. Ahhhh perfection :) The knots were willing to be buried but they also do not seem to want to pop back out. Mr. Squirrel was done with a satin stitch and a running stitch. I added just little dots to the weasel, the fabric is dark so his eyes aren't real noticeable but he does look a little better with those little dots :) And Mr. Fox presented his own issues. I tried drawing on full eyes and I could not help but think that he looked like a demon dog. So I decided to do a satin stitch for him as well only on a much smaller scale.

And this one is a wrap! :) I am so honored that Kat trusted me to quilt this very special top. If you want to help out with Kat's project, you can participate by making a block (June's block instructions are up!), or 10, or a top, or a quilt. :)

For me, it is on to the next :) I still have a bit left to add to Purple Haze and I have not forgotten about the quilting post for that one! You'll be hearing from me again soon. I have decided that until that one is done, I do not get to start another project . . . I'll let you know how that goes!

Linking up with Finish it Up Friday and TGIFF with Leanne over at The Devoted Quilter.

Until next time, keep on quilting!
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