Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Twin Connection (Spools) Quilt Complete!



This was my big project at Quilt Camp a few weeks ago. I was quilting this puppy virtually the whole weekend. I forget how long that always takes! At home, it would have taken me MONTHS to finish the quilting.


Here you can see my set-up. I'm using a walking foot along with the pin in the "rut" of the sew line before it. Those blue and white things are "Sew Easy Quilt Discs." They made my life a lot easier once I realized I had them in my tool box. I was using a pair of gloves, but every time I came to a safety pin (about every 4 inches), I had to take off the gloves to undo the pins. It was slow going there for a while ... These Quilt Discs also allowed me relax more and grab onto more of the surface area of the quilt which made it much easier to push the quilt around.


Here's a page from The actual Sweet Leaf Notebook with notes on this project, including the quilting pattern ... I really did try to get a good picture of the quilting, but couldn't get a picture where the stitching showed up well.

For the quilting pattern, I used Leah Day's Matrix pattern edge-to-edge. It was PERFECT for this quit. I drew a curvy diagonal line from one corner to the opposite corner and stitched it with the walking foot. Then I used the walking foot with the pin to trace that last stitch line. It worked beautifully! I did one direction Friday night. That looked fine in and of itself. I could have stopped right there. The lady next to me was a long-arm quilter. I asked her opinion : Did it need more, or not? Like any good counselor, she just said that was a personal choice. Did I think it was finished? Or did I think it needed something more? I slept on it (literally), then decided to quilt the cross hatches in the other direction on Saturday. It really completed the quilt.

Note added Jan. 2011 : This quilt was gifted to our friend Kevin Bradley and his wife Elena.