Quilting Hollyhocks Around the Barn - Step 4 The Flowers and Step 5 Revisiting the Barn Rails

This weekend, I worked on stitching the flowers on the Hollyhock Quilt.  Kind of a wavy spiral. 

 

 

It's always a good idea to practice the intended design before you have to do it for real.  I've learned that the hard way!  Here I was practicing the spiral pattern for the hollyhocks.  At first I was trying to start at a point on the edge of the flower, spiral in, and then spiral back out again.   But that felt too cramped, so I wound up starting at the center, and spiraling out -- a one way trip.  

 I worked on the flowers over 2 days.  It was good to break it up, because it was a lot of ground to cover.  This kind of quilting can be hard on a body -- very physical, although I have some things that make it easier:

A teflon oven sheet underneath that allows for easier sliding under the needle.  Less friction.

For this job, I was using some Neutrogena lotion that is quite sticky, and allows for good gription between my hands and the quilt.  It's easier than putting on and pulling off gloves when I have to cut threads, or some other fine motor skill task.  

 After the flowers were done, I decided to revisit the Egg and Carton pattern along the barn rail borders.  I thought the space was a little too wide open and needed a little more to fill in the spaces, otherwise it would not match the much more densely quilted flowers.  After trying a few designs on paper, I finally realized, it's the same basic shape as the leaves, so I added the swoops inside the eye shape, and an extra circle inside the star shape.  I think that will be enough.

After finishing up the rails, I needed to do something with the added barnwood panels at the center.  Since it was a larger patch, I decided to fill it with a freemotion woodgrain texture.    Again -- Good to practice the designs before committing to them on the quilt, or having to rip out stitches.   I usually try it out on paper first, then move on to a practice quilt sandwich.  This is great for warming up, and to get the pattern into muscle memory before you have to do it for real. 

 

 For reference, this is what the whole quilt looks like -- before quilting.  I still have the borders to do, and the dark green stalks and the cream backgrounds behind the leaves and flowers.  Still thinking about what to do with those spaces ..

Step-by-step, I'll get it done!  I hope that will be a trend for this year.   ;-)