Fishy Finish

A customer brought in a darling little quilt that her grandmother started but didn't get to finish.  Although the grandmother hoped to hand-quilt it, she asked to have the quilt finished by machine .

I had the pleasure of quilting this fun quilt.  Of course, my photos are of the usual quality, but I think you can see enough to make out some of the quilting.  

I really tried to get the trapunto of the big center fish.  It's pretty amazing. There was already a layer of batting, so my job here was pretty easy. I simply followed the outline of the fish and the lure and added one other line of stitching to stabilize it really well.  Her center line along the gills I decided not to touch because it already gives enough dimension but still allows the center of the fish to really puff out.  More importantly though, it allows the viewer to see the original hand stitches.

 Of course, to make sure that the trapunto stands out, I added lots of stitching around the trout.  Above the fish I quilted wavy lines to create movement in the water.

And below the trout I quilted air bubbles. 

 For the grassy area, I followed some of the lines in the largest grasses and leaves, going around or down the center, which ever worked best for continuous line quilting.  Every cattail, seedpod and large oak leaf is outlined.  I used the lightest beige grasses to travel around the quilt because my beige/gray thread just melted away.

The open water was especially easy.  Some smooth wavy lines created movement and ripples.

The treeline and sky were a little more challenging.  I decided to follow the edges of the woods where the two grays meet. It required really paying attention to where I was headed, but the result is that the line delineates the depth of the trees and the tree tops where the rising sun sheds some light.

Finally the fisherman and his boat got extra special attention.  I outlined everything.  I even followed his fishing line from rod and reel to the lure in the trout's mouth.  It looks easy, but one or two stitches off, and it had to be ripped out because the thread matches the line not the background.

In other words, I really challenged myself and had fun with Uncle Joe's Lures.  Here's hoping both customer and Uncle Joe (yes, there really is an Uncle Joe who hand-makes and sells lures) both love the quilt.

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Tea Party Anyone?

Oh, I should begin by saying this is a real tea party, with cups and plates and goodies and dolls and a sweet little doll quilt.  All manner of political hits or misses aside, please.  This blog is about anything but politics.  Back to the tea party and the sweet little quilt.

I discovered a quilt on Pinterest a few weeks back and loved the look.  In no time I'd figured out that the block is really quite easy, so I drew out a quick pattern and figured out the square sizes.  In no time I had a block completed.  But I made a discovery: while the quilt is pretty, I don't want to make one.  So there sat one little block--too big for AAQI and too small for much of anything except a baby doll.

This afternoon I had a moment to myself with no papers to grade...finally!  So I wandered around the studio looking for something to do and spied the block.  Well, why not?  Make the doll quilt and toss it into the toy basket already.

Don't you know that I had fun....then I had more fun taking pictures.  I carried out a favorite baby doll and a few tea party items since the outdoors makes for the best photo shoots and tea parties.  Dolly and I set everything up, had tea, snapped a few pics and chatted for a while.  Turns out Dolly loves the quilt so much she agreed to a nap.

 

I watched a video of Angela Walters' Quiltcon talk on her process for quilting and decided to apply some of the ideas I got to this little quilt.  Walters suggests extending the lines of a block out into the quilt--simply draw the lines out and see what happens.  I decided to test it by drawing the line from the little point that sticks out of the flower.  In the picture below that line is on the left side of the picture and separates the pebbles and the swirls. 

 

 

Another of Walters' suggestions is to treat each of the resulting areas with a different quilting motif. 

 

 Finally Walters' showed how she uses quilting to add movement to a quilt.  While she showed quilts with swirls and lots of long lines, I didn't have the space for either, so I quilted lines with different distances between them to add variety and dimension. 

 



 

By changing thread colors, I was able to quickly add in small loops on each petal.  Because I added an extra layer of batting right behind the purple flower and quilted outside of the flower with tight motifs, the flower details add the look of trapunto to the quilt.

 



 



I know it seems like lots of work for a toy quilt, but it really did not take very long and I learned a few techniques along the way and had loads of fun!  Don't you think the little granddaughters are going to love this doll quilt?  They will be allowed to play, drag, and what ever else they can think to do with it. 

 

Have you made a doll quilt before?  What do you do with orphan blocks?