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Saturday, March 21, 2015

Some progress - I've been quilting

Quilting in progress

I finished quilting this version of my pattern Consider on Thursday night and took pictures on Friday morning, and yet, it is already Saturday morning before I have had a chance to share them here. Oh well. And not the best photos, again, oh well, its a progress post, right?

I had a lot of fun doing all the quilting on this quilt, especially the borders. This approach of breaking up the quilting so that it looks a lot like ariel views of fields on the prairie was totally inspired by the class I took with the amazing Krista Withers at QuiltCon, and also by Carolyn Friedlander's quilts and her fabric patterns on Doe too - Carolyn has also been my teacher, at Sewdown Nashville.

Quilting in progress, detail

I used a number of different aqua and yellow Aurifil 50wt threads to quilt this quilt and played with straight line patterns. All the quilting was done free hand on my Millenium longarm quilting machine. The pattern fabrics are all from Fabric Spark, and were a blogger bundle I put together for Daryl a few months ago. And yes, I will totally finish writing this pattern this weekend and get it to the testers so it will be available soon.

Quilting in progress, detail

I consider my approach to quilting to be industrial modern. My lines are not perfectly straight or perfectly spaced, and I love it that way. And I love quilting straightish lines most. The pattern on the right is the only one with a curve on this quilt. I think that this mid century wave can play well on a straight line quilt.

Quilting in progress, detail

I had a lot of thread breaks while quilting the border on this quilt. When I get tired, I tend to jerk my longarm just a little on the turns and I think that is the cause of the thread breaks. As the thread breaks mount up, I know it is time to stop for the night. I anchor the threads as I restart the lines, but I prefer to also mend the thread ends in rather than just snip them. I can do that along with the binding.

Quilting in progress, detail

Quilting the border in chunks like this makes it nice and easy to quilt in the space I have available on the longarm. It takes a lot longer than just doing lines across the full space, but I am loving the impact. I can't wait to see how it looks after a wash and dry so I'll be getting the border on this weekend.

So as the sun is coming up, I am looking forward to some sewing time today.

It is National Quilting Day in the USA and I see references to World Wide Quilting Day on the internet too - in any event it seems like it is definitely a day to be quilting.

Best,

Leanne

22 comments:

  1. Looks fabulous! Love your quilting.

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  2. Wonderful! And definitely a day to quilt.

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  3. It looks fantastic Leanne. And yes, it is a good day to do quilty things

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  4. Awesome quilting. Are you washing and drying your quilt before attaching the binding?

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  5. Awesome quilting. Are you washing and drying your quilt before attaching the binding?

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  6. I love the free hand quilting on this quilt. Been doing a bit of free hand myself on my domestic machine. Next step for me is to try some of the fancy stitches I have at my finger tips.

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  7. I love the quilting! I love how it adds both texture and a touch of color to the border. What do you mean by mending the threads?

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  8. i ADORE the quilting on this one!!! So interesting, and adds so much without overwhelming your pattern. XX!

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  9. Love especially the quilting on the grey!

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  10. I like all your variations on straight lines. Especially together.

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  11. Your quilting is just perfect for this quilt Leanne. I especially love that area of tiny crosshatched lines. It really does look like an aerial view of fields with the border broken up like you have. I love it.

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  12. Your quilting is just perfect for this quilt Leanne. I especially love that area of tiny crosshatched lines. It really does look like an aerial view of fields with the border broken up like you have. I love it.

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  13. Looking really cool! I love the way you quilted it.

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  14. Wow, I love the way that you've quilted this with so many different details to draw the eye.

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  15. that bundle looks amazing with the grey background - beautiful

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  16. I love your description of your quilting as "industrial modern!"

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  17. I love your description of your quilting as "industrial modern!"

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