LAQ87 Floating Rectangles Quilt – A Modern Quilting Design

When my friend, Susan, asked me to quilt this, I was excited because I’d been reading Angela Walter’s book, "In the Studio With Angela Walters", on quilting modern quilts (quiltingismytherapy.com)]; and had some ideas I wanted to try.

Planning the Quilting

I took an excellent online class from Carla Barrett at featheredfibers.wordpress.com called Tablet Design Class for Quilters and we used a Bamboo tablet to create a quilting line drawing on top of a quilt photo in Photoshop. By the way, I highly recommend her classes.

Since getting my snazzy cell phone, I’ve recently incorporated Carla’s method for sketching the quilting in the Sketchbook Mobile app on my phone. I can then e-mail the plan(s) to my client so we can agree on the quilting design up front.

Here's where I doodled different ideas:

Then I settled on 2 different plans; a fancy allover (a lot of modern quilts have allover straight or curvy lines) or a semi custom (different designs in separate areas of the quilt).

allover

semi custom

This way Susan could see the difference and decide which she liked the best. It’s easier to spend the extra money for custom quilting when you can compare the two results up front.

We went with the semi-custom, and I’m really glad because it enhances the modern feel of the quilt. I quilted random-sized pebbles in the background:

an oval meander in the rectangles and a straight line just outside the skinny strips to separate and bring them forward:

Details

·         Size - 58x59

·         Thread - Omni black walnut and Omni mahogany; So Fine buffalo in the bobbin

·         Batting- Hobbs black 80/20

·         Backing - same as the background fabric

Strategy

·         Used Omni thread which is thicker than So Fine so the quilting showed a little more.

·         Used So Fine in the bobbin – waaaayy less bobbin changes and the color worked with both top threads.

·         Loaded the quilt so the rectangles ran parallel to the Longarm table. Then I could quilt across the background, change the      thread and quilt inside a row of rectangles, change thread and quilt more background, roll the quilt and repeat.

Thanks to Susan for letting me quilt her cool modern quilt top. ;)  I love this quilt!

Longarm Quilt #35 Autumn Wedding Quilt – using a panto for free motion & other firsts

My friend, Susan, had me quilt this as a wedding gift for a relative so I was REALLY nervous.  But, of course, I had to incorporate a lot of firsts - making a stencil, using pounce chalk and learning a freehand design from a panto.

It’s a small quilt using the Potato Chip pattern from our LQS, thequiltersmarket.com. I wanted some fancy custom quilting since it was for a wedding. I used a really pretty stencil from Urban Elementz called Dusty Miller for the plain blocks because I knew it would really show.

I knew the quilting wouldn’t show much in the blocks with the print fabric so I found a simpler design in my Quilting Dot to Dot book from goldenthreads.com by Cheryl Barnes. I drew the design onto stencil plastic and cut it out with a stencil burner.

The Homemade Stencil Block

The Back

I used the Aloha sashing pantograph, also from urbanelementz.com for the borders. So I used 3 different designs that had a similar "feeling". 

I didn’t want to turn the quilt to line up the panto, but I thought I could get the design into my muscle memory and quilt it freehand. I used my trusty plexiglass on top of the panto and traced over and over (and over) with a dry erase marker. (For more details about this technique, see my 8/26/13 posting.) Then I drew it on plain paper until it was in my head and it worked!

The freehand sashing!

A view of the back

I still remember taking a deep breath before quilting every block! But looking back, I'm really happy with how it turned out.

A quilted Christmasy quilt

Today's quilt is one I quilted for my friend, Susan. The pattern is called Wrap It Up and we made it in a class at our LQS. It uses just three colors, but has a nifty interlocking "box" look. She used black with beautiful gold metallic swirls, red with gold dots and black with gold dots. Christmasy, but not too christmasy.

I have a harder time using pantographs, so I've been practicing my freehand allover designs. The only way to get better at it is to just quilt some quilts.  So I took the plunge and quilted her top using a freehand allover holly leaf and berry swirl with some pine branches thrown in. I used black Omni for the top and black So Fine in the bobbin with black 80/20 batting.

A berry grouping with a flourish

 

A lot of texture without being too distracting but lending to the Christmasy flavor.

Here you can see some of the holly leaves and pine branches.

 

A helpful tip: I always practice on paper or a whiteboard first. Once the quilt is on the frame, I put my big piece of acrylic (with colored tape around the edges to mark the boundaries) on the quilt top and doodle the design. Then I really get an idea of how the quilting will look on the quilt. I'll try and get a picture of that for my next post.

First Free Motion Quilt on the Longarm Machine

This is the third quilt that I quilted on my longarm machine, way back in 2010. I know it's the 3rd because I actually keep a list. Because I work full time, I was getting frustrated with my lack of accomplishment so I started a list. The list is kinda long now, but lately I've been distracted with my embroidery machine (we'll save that topic for a later blog). 

Anywho, the quilting on this was all done freehand. I had to figure out how to move from one area to the next without a lot of stops and starts. I have a big piece of plexiglass that I draw on with a dry erase marker. I can put the plexi right on top of the quilt and draw designs to see how they'll look on the quilt and to figure out how to move from each design. I put colored tape around the edges of the plexiglass so I don't slip and draw on the quilt top - that would be a bad thing :(

The quilting isn't that great, but I figure you have to start somewhere; and I get better with each one. I used yellow variegated thread and the backing fabric is black with tiny white dots, like stars.

Star Light, Star Bright

 

I recently sent it to Quilts Beyond Borders, quiltsbeyondborders.wordpress.com to find a wonderful new home. Let me know if you have any questions about the quilting.