Spring QAL Day 5/6

Quilting, quilting, quilting. On one hand, I like this part, because it’s really the point where you almost have a real finished project (pssh, who needs binding). On the other, my sewing machine doesn’t really like behaving when it comes to quilting—FMQ, at least. I can fiddle with my tension/needle and rethread the machine all I want sometimes and the tension just won’t be right, and then bam! it’ll magically start working again. So, walking foot it was.

Here’s the quilted quilt.

qal-finished-front — Forgive our apt. exterior. We’ve been waiting on the landlord to re-trim those windows for going on 3 summers now…

The back, which shows the quilting design pretty well:

And some close-ups:

I honestly don’t have much of an artist’s statement about why I quilted it that way. Mostly, it seemed like it’d take less time than stippling the whole thing, and has some of the mirrored symmetry that I put into organizing the block pieces. When I came up with the idea, it was so I could get some FMQ practice, but turns out, those patterns (spiral in the center excepted) are much easier with a walking foot, at least on my ~~demon~~ machine—but much, much slower. I originally wanted to do a curved spiral in the blocks, but couldn’t draw it out like I wanted, so square ones it is.

I used a variegated yellow-orange cotton Gütermann thread for the blocks and sashing. It provides a nice contrast to the plum sashing, while still complimenting the overall color ranges in the quilt. Also, I bought a giant 800m spool for a very small project (it was the best color and I could only get that size spool) and figured this would be a good way to use some of it. For the border, I used a green that closely matches the green in the print. It’s another cotton Gütermann that I had on hand. Looking at the finished product, I wish I’d used a contrasting one there too (even the same variegated as the rest), but oh well.

In the past, I’ve used different thread in the bobbin, but decided to go ahead and use the same as the top to give some visual interest to the solid gray back.

And that’s that. Don’t tell the quilting nazis, but I actually bound it before I finished the quilting on two sides of the border. I really needed hand work to do yesterday. It worked out fine, though.

How is yours going?

Maker of various fabric things

Spring QAL Day 5/6

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