I recently finished the quilt that I made for my mother in law. It is (almost) a wholecloth quilt and quilting this one took forever.
My MIL loves nature, especially birds. But I knew from the beginning that I wanted to make a rather reduced quilt, not a “bold statement”. She has browns and blue-ish greens in her appartment and I didn’t want to add more colour.
Believe it or not: I tried some paper piecing! After Lynne’s class in London 2012, I only made on other block (during a Modern Quilt Guild Bielefeld Sew-in). And then I went crazy and chose this block:
A blue tit (pattern bought here). Let me just say, Lynne’s class helped a lot and despite of all those little bits and pieces, it came together rather smoothly. The seamripper came out once or twice but within three or four evenings I was able to complete the paper pieced block.
I later embroidered the eye in black DMC floss.
I “extended” that branch to both sides and added only white kona as background.
I then free-motion quilted leaves all over the background. I started with these easy leaves - until I ran out of this variegated (Aurifil) thread.
After some muttering and swearing, I chose another green-ish variegated thread and quilted some other leaves – a bit more difficult, I admit.
I am sorry, but I found it very hard to take photos of that “light-green and white variegated thread” on white fabric. Here’s another shot of both kinds of leaves together:
For good measure and to add some interest, I added a dragonfly (in a gree-blue variegated Aurifil)… (inspired by this book)
…and a caterpillar in the same colours.
I pondered on the bird’s quilting for a long time and in the end, I simply stitched in the ditch around all the larger pieces. That meant a lot of thread changes, though…
I am however happy with the result. The stitches are almost invisible and the bird is crisp and radiant compared to the (almost) white background.
I used some white-brown-blue large scale print for the back and machine-bound my quilt in more kona white, stitching the binding down with a triple zig zag stitch.
Here’s one last shot where you might be able to see the scale of the leaves. I did not want to quilt it too densely and it came out of the dryer very soft and fluffy.
I hope that this quilt brings some joy and comfort to my MIL who will have to undergo a major surgery in a few weeks. I am happy to report that she liked her quilt and I sincerely hope that she will use it often: she remarked that it was “too precious to use” (o:
Does that happen to you, too? And how do you persuade the presentee to actually use his/her new quilt?
Christine
