Friday 29 July 2011

More 'It's a Hoot' quilts

Here are the other two quilts I quilted for Nell, both using Moda's 'It's a Hoot' fabrics:


This large lap quilt which added red and white polkadodts and a white solid to the mix had a few technical issues, partly becuse the Kona white which Nell had even cut to size went on an unplanned 'holiday', and she needed to use a lighter weight fabric instead. I decided it needed something simple and organic which would disguise the difficulties, and went with my current favourite - a freehand meandering open feather.


The second quilt is going to Quilts for Queensland, and was nice and evenly pieced.


I decided to try a variation of the meandering open feather and came up with this rather heart-shaped version with a pointed dip in the top of each plume.


This worked out really well; it actually quilts up faster than the original version, and the dip in the middle adds a lot of flexibility into the shape of the plume (for fitting into/filling odd gaps) and I was thrilled with how it worked out - I'll definitely be using this again sometime!


I decided to quilt the centre and the border separately; the centre uses beige Bottomline thread, top adn bottom.


The border is the original open feather in a straight line, with an irregular wavy 'spine' for interest, using an aqua thread to match the border fabric - Aurifil on top and Bottomline in the bobbin. These two differences help define the areas more clearly on the back. I really like the overall effect of the different border treatment, but I actually like the centre quilting much better than the border.


The backing was a lightweight twill-type fabric, which distorted easily, so took a little longer to sandwich, but it ran through the mahcine smoothly and without problem. Because of it's tendency to distort, it did create a tiny pucker on the back, but not enough to worry about in a utilitarian quilt - it still looks lovely.

2 comments:

Nell said...

Wow! The qld quilt did come up well didn't it? It looks heaps bigger than I remembered too? I hope you got to enjoy some time for your own projects in amongst all of that quilting for me!
Thanks so much!
p.s. white sashing wasn't so much a "having to use something else" as a "really need to get my eyes checked" and/or get more sleep as I didn't even realise it wasn't the original choice until half way through LOL

Lily Mulholland said...

Oooh, lovely quilt and fabulous quilting, Emma. Love it!