Blogger's Quilt Festival - Peace

I named this quilt Peace, as that was what I was thinking about while I made her. Peace in more of a personal peace and quiet, calm and restful sort of way. She was made from Kona cottons and Essex linen borders and binding. After a wash and dry she is about 44" square.

I am entering Peace into the Original Design category of Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival. This pattern is called Consider and it is my newest quilting pattern. I am hoping it will be ready for sale in a couple of weeks or so. It is inspired by the work of Josef Albers like my pattern Canvas was.

I wanted to play with a new to me kind of matchstick quilting. So instead of the mostly straight lines I often use, I made the lines noticeably wavy, sort of like wind, water or woodgrain.



I used 100% cotton thread in both the needle and bobbin. I hand guided, free motion quilted these lines on my Millenium longarm quilting machine. From time to time I changed to another thread colour.



The texture on this quilt is fantastic after a wash and a dry. The quilt is full of movement, like a calm, warm summer breeze or gentle waves at the beach.



This quilting could be easily done on a regular machine as well as the long arm and on my regular machine I would probably use a walking foot. As shown in the picture above, I would draw a line about an inch or so out from the last quilted bit and then fill it in.



It's a little easier to see the quilting method in these next few before the wash photos. While I filled in that inch or so of unquilted area, I would follow the top and bottom lines of the space, without worrying if the lines were even or terribly neat or if they crossed in the tight areas. Sometimes I would loop back and forth in a wide gap making a shape much like an onion.



If I felt there was too wide a gap between two areas, I just quilted another line into that area. You can see that there were areas where the thread built up and then some wider spaces which create so much of the texture.



As no part of any quilting line has to be any exact place, it means that most any wobble just fits right in. The more that is quilted the more any wiggles or wobbles disappear. Truly, this is very easy to achieve and looks so much more difficult than it is. But patience is important, there are a lot of lines.



That photo above is also before the wash. Although you can see the quilting lines a bit more than after the wash and dry, for me the design process is not completed until that final texture the wash gives is added - you can compare this picture to the ones at the top of the post.



Here is the back. I am growing very fond of backs with large pieces of some favourite fabrics.



One last picture with the wind catching the quilt. I am off to enjoy all the fantastic quilts in the Blogger's Quilt Festival and I hope you will be too.

Best,

Leanne

ps. My giveaway of the she can quilt blogger's bundle sponsored by Fabric Spark is still open, go here to enter if you have not yet done so.