THE FEAR FACTOR

Often when I stand in front of my Bernina Q24 and look at a customer’s quilt, there is a fleeting moment of fear in me. Most of the time I don’t understand it because I have been quilting for a very long time and yet, there it is!

SAMPLER QUILT

The latest quilt that I am busy with is a sampler that, as you know, consists of various different blocks.  There is a medallion in the centre surrounded by eight patchwork blocks, each different from one another. The client appliqued the corner blocks and turned these so that they were mirror imaged. My problem comes in with how to quilt this! Should I ignore the pattern and do an over-all quilting pattern or do I quilt each block as an individual block?

THE MEDALLION CENTRE BLOCK

The medallion centre block is made up of patchwork as well as applique on a solid lilac background fabric. I thought that it was so pretty and would accentuate the setting by quilting a frame of feathers around it. I quilted pebbles all over the lilac background in Glide Silver and that made the appliqued work pop beautifully.

Beautifully appliqued and pieced Medallion.

RULERWORK ROCKS!

For the eight patchwork blocks, I used ruler foot #72 and the Bernina straight ruler to do some ditch work. When that was done, the large oval ruler was used to quilt curves around the triangles. On the smaller triangles I had to use medium size circle rulers. Once all the ruler work was completed, it was play-time for me! I then did some free motion quilting with foot #24 which is my favourite way of quilting. In order to have continuity, I used the same way of quilting in the other blocks. Feathers and shell shapes were used to quilt in some of the triangles.

The four corner blocks that were mirror imaged, I free motion quilted with the same pattern throughout. There is no quilting on the appliqued work but it is quite densely quilted around the motifs.

BORDER AND SASHES

A fine feather design was used to quilt the sashes between the blocks. Once all that was quilted, I changed to Isacord thread and quilted the over- and under-lapping spirals on all the mint green background areas with a matching mint green colour. I repeated the over- and under-lapping spirals but on a much larger scale on the wide border in Glide silver thread.

The overall effect of the quilting on this rather pale but beautiful quilt brought it to life. What fun it was to figure out what to quilt where! I am pleased to say, the client absolutely loves her quilt!

The Front of the Quilt

The Back of the Quilt

WHERE TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT ME AND MY INTERESTS

Have a look at my Facebook page, Tilly de Harde Textile Artist as well as on Instagram #tillydeharde for interesting little titbits and short videos of things that inspire me and to see how I create some of my art. Remember to leave a comment in the comment section below!