I know, I know. It’s been a while since QuiltCon, and where have I been? Truth be told, I haven’t felt much like writing recently. This last week, though, I worked on a top that was way out of my comfort zone, and one which really made me crazily happy. And while it wasn’t “modern”, I loved the whole process. It was a challenge to step outside of my usual style, and yet still remain true to what I like to do. After spending three days on it, I came away rejuvenated and energized, and it was just what I needed.
This quilt top, a variation of the Log Cabin, is a shop sample for The Joyful Quilter, and it’s their shop hop quilt pattern.
Here’s the front:
I chose to do ruler work to emphasize the shape of the diamonds in the darker prints, with a leafy/feathery fill in the center to pull in the feathers I knew would be in the border somewhere.
When I was talking with Susan, the owner, she really loved the red squares, and to emphasize them, I left them unquilted and puffy (we used a wool batt)m and I love how they pop out. I also put some medallions in the center of each big diamond, and you can see that better from the back:
The back shows off that big grid X. I used a pretty simple swirly feathery fill to offset all those straight lines.
When you’re quilting, yo want a balance of quilted and unquilted, so that there aren’t any areas of excess fullness or waviness. I knew with the denser quilting in the middle and the puffy lines and squares I needed to do something else for the border that still held everything in place and provided enough quilting so it wouldn’t be unbalanced, visually or quilt-ily. I also wanted to bring in the feathers so that it would have some cohesion. I did some template work, too, to tie that element in as well, since I had used them for the medallions so extensively.
I really love those feathery corners, since they remind me of temple architectural bits from ancient Greece.
Yeah, I am pretty happy. I love Log Cabin quilts, but they can be a little tricky to work with, since they’re very busy. When quilting something that will be a kit that Joyful Quilter will be selling, you want your quilting to help sell the quilt, rather than be the sole focus of the show. Looking at it, I think I managed to balance my quilting with the top, enhancing it without overwhelming it. Much of that was thread choice, since I chose threads that blended with the background.
It all looks great and I’m sure Susan was very happy with the results.