Quilting Deep Water on the Loon Lake Quilt

 

 I was stuck on this project the last few weeks, wondering what to do with the underwater blocks.  I concluded that my first choice of water motif (a seaweed-y feathery design) was not going to work so well.   I realized the water surface and sky blocks seem to be to pressed down, not letting the puffy wool batt do it's thing, providing raised areas around the many objects in this quilt.  So I had to re-group and come up with Plan B.

Surfing the web one day, I stumbled across this commercial quilt, and I thought would be a good choice -- easy to do, and reflecting the water reeds and grasses.

 

So I laid out the quilt and took some thrums (leftover strings from weaving that are otherwise too short to keep, but still manage to be useful) and laid them out where I wanted the stitching.  

 

Then I chalked a line next to the strings.  Chalk is the best marking took in this case because it stays on long enough to get the stitching done, and easily brushes off afterwards, leaving no permanent marks.

 

The next task is to stitch on those chalked lines.  

Since these were more or less straight-ish lines with slight curves, I used a regular foot, though I think I would have been happioer with the good ol' free-motion foot. 

Here are some of the results:

 

Nice and open stitching, while allowing the wool batt to do it's thing underneath ...

 

... making it look 3D.

I also finished the gravel at the bottom of the quilt, so hopefully, I'll be able to do the binding during Christmas week!

Looking forward to another finish!

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!

A Few Small Repairs on the Loon Lake Quilt: Replacing the Misfit Log

Ah!  Much better!

What did I do with my "extra" time this weekend not having to work on Farmer's Wife blocks?  I knew It would take me a while to quilt up the flowers on the Hollyhock Quilt, but when I finished that job mid Sunday afternoon, I still had time ...

 

The Misfit Log 

So my thoughts turned to this job that's been bothering me for years, and may have contributed to taking so long to finish this quilt top.   The piece of fabric included in the kit for the log just never set right with me, never worked ---  Too warm and brown for the deep bottom of the lake.   And it's the wrong texture.   So when I got the barn wood fabric recently, there was enough left over that I could replace / hide / cover over that odd brown curly mis-matched log, with something that truly looked like it had been under water for a while.  

It was quite a job.  First I had to cut out a new log shape onto the Wonder Under fusible, then fuse it to the new fabric, and cut to the proper shape.   Then, on the quilt itself, I had to unsew / release all the appliques that were on top of the old log.  After ripping out the stitching, it wasn't that hard to lift the freshwater grasses / seaweed.  The trickiest part was the fish fin at the top of the log.  I had to literally cut that part out, and re-fuse it to the new log once it was in place.   Don't worry-- The fish was never harmed in any way!

Then the task of fusing it down again, and re-stitching.  It didn't take as long as it could have, and wasn't such the headache I thought it would be.  I am much happier with this part of the quilt now, but it makes the other brown parts of the log stand out as not quite fitting.  But this is much more subtle, and I think I can live with what's left there now.  Whew!

 

 

Practicing freemotion wood grain designs for the Hollyhock Quilt was also the prompt that made me think of the log.  I did not end up using this pattern on the log above.  Instead, I followed the patterning in the fabric to a good effect.  ;-) 

 

 

Green Darner Dragonfly

I also took the time to add the 2 applique butterflies to the top of the quilt.  I was thinking I would wait to add those until it had been quilted, but I also did not want to lose them between now and that nebulous time in the future.   So they are now part of the quilt, too.

I will have to plan another day for making quilt sandwiches ...