A Passion For Purple

A Passion for Purple!

This past week found me with my favorites:  quilting, purple fabric and free motion feathers!  What a wonderful and challenging time of design!

I've taken the month off from customer quilts to do a little quilting of my own.  One of my plans was a relatively quick whole cloth wallhanging.  What an experience!  The best part was the opportunity to brainstorm and use an array of unusual tools to complete this pretty lavender fat-quarter-size whole cloth quilt. 

First, I knew I wanted the simple scroll design with a feather and I could draw that freehand but I really wanted it encased in an oval.

After looking everywhere, I saw this!  My husband had taken this photo years ago when we were out pheasant hunting.  It hangs in our hallway.  What a great template!

Perfect!!

A pretty scallop or lacy effect would really add to that oval but how could that be accomplished?   After brainstorming again, I remembered the scallops on this Handiquilter 8" ruler/template and decided it would be perfect to create the echoed scallops surrounding the oval.

And this quilters hexagon rotary ruler/template was just right the echoed angles surrounding the oval.

Thread!

The main design and feathers were stitched with Metallic 40 weight thread by Superior Threads in purple with the hearts and pebbles in the echoed areas in green.

The background area behind the feathered scroll was completed with this 1" on-point stencil grid designed by Gina Perkes.  I had to move it a couple of times to fill the area but it worked great and I used the new 100 weight Microquilter by Superior Threads for that background stitching.

The final outside background I wanted to have blend more into the fabric so I changed to Prescencia 60 weight cotton in a lavender that blended perfectly.

This wall hanging took form step by step.  It really wasn't planned all in advance but rather grew as each step was completed.  I love it and am thrilled with the finish!

I hope you enjoyed the post on  A Passion For Purple!  Have a most blessed New Year and enjoy a wonderful quilty day looking at some at the creativity at the blogs on my sidebar!!

Oriental Paper Piecing

Paper Piecing & Beautiful

This finished customer table topper/wall hanging is absolutely gorgeous and entailed so much work that the quilter decided she was willing to have the project quilted for judging or appraisal should she desire to have that done.  So the quilting entails more work than is often put in to an everyday quilt.

This little quilt finished at approximately 19" square so you can just imagine what the quilter was dealing with.  Now what do I do?????  The first step was choosing batting for the quilt sandwich and I went with two layers:  Hobbs Tuscany 80/20 cotton/wool for the top layer and Hobbs 80/20 cotton/polyester for the bottom layer.  This creates a bit of three dimension effect and allows the quilting to pop.  If you'll look closely you can tell that the quilting began with most every seam stitched in the ditch.  For a project this size, that was critical.  So I began by going down the seams on every angle:  diagonals, vertical and horizontal, and then stitched around each sawtooth star as well as the center square of each star.  This resulted in every seam being stitch but one tiny area in each block that was not a concern.  Now what????

Because of the size of this quilt, a photo did not work well so I layed my trusty plexiglass out on top with a  dry erase marker and began dividing areas.  The original plan was to do some very dense quilting but some beautiful designs started appearing that went well with the design and fabrics of this quilt.  Here's what just the drawing on plexiglass looked like.  

Now, what thread?  When at the International Quilt Festival in Houston in November, I picked up the new 100 weight polyester Microquilter by Superior Threads and decided to use it in the bobbin throughout the quilt as well as for the top thread for the ditch stitching only.  Isacord tri-lobal polyester in 40 weight in white and green was used for the remainder of the top quilting.  Why Isacord?  Why not one of my favorite cottons on a quilt like this?  Well, it was actually a hard thought out decision.  The answer?  Isacord was the only one I could find with a thread that matched the green almost exactly.  With the shiny appearance in the oriental style fabrics, I figured that would be ok.  

Here's the finished quilt.  Once I started quilting it, I realized I needed something in the blocks around the sawtooth stars so we added a few feathers.  The thin green lines following the green in the quilt created a ribbon-type of effect that was very soft and pleasing.  The small outside border was finished with straight lines to bring the quilting to a close.  The way the quilting was done, the stars really pop up off the quilt.

I absolutely love how this quilt finished and enjoyed every step of the detailed process.

That's my finish for the week!  Join me at the links on my side bar as well as Crazy Mom Quilts here: http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com  and have a wonderful weekend!!!