Next Steps on The Loon Lake Quilt

Progress on Day at Loon Lake Quilt

This is the quilt I've been working on lately, but I could not take it to Quilt Camp because it's not a good set-up there with with round tables.   This is where it stands now ... I've done a fair amount of work on it, though it's hard to tell from the last time it appeared on Sweet Leaf Notebook.

Since then, I've swapped out a few fabrics for what I felt were better choices -- on the log (again) and some of the lily pad leaves.

 

With the top sandwiched with batting and backing, the next step is to start stitching through all the layers with the quilting.  At this point, I stitched-in-the-ditch along the edges of each block to add some stability before I did the rest of the quilting.  The photo above shows in red (dramatic, but only for the purposes of illustration) where I stitched along those block edges.  In actuality, I used clear thread.

The next task was to outline all the appliqued elements.  The wool batting (Quilter's Dream) has been wonderful to sew through, and it makes thing pop out 3D style once they are outlined in stitch.  In the photo above, I quickly outlined those elements in read (again) to give you and idea of what I did this weekend.  It's not hard work. It just takes time and patience.  I've been working 1 block at a time, matching the outlining thread with the background of each block.  

Note: This is an older photo with some of the older fabric colors for the log.  

In this photo, you can see the stitched outline around the loon, and how it pushes the background down, and allows the loon to pop up, giving that 3D effect.

Here is one of the fish.  Some of the stitching (embroidery) happened BEFORE layered with batting and backing.  That stitching adds dimension and detail, but is relatively flat in the grand scheme of things because it's not attached to the backing or the batting layers.  It is limited to the quilt top layer.  Here again, you can see the outline stitching that makes this fish pop out of the background.

Here's the third fish.

The next step is to figure out what to quilt into the backgrounds.  I have some ideas ... but I'll save that for another post.  More to come!