Blogger's Quilt Festival - Morning Swim

I decided to share another of my beach scene quilts, since I've just finished this one, and they're becoming a bit of a trademark for me.

I designed this quilt at the same time as 'Through the Arched Window', when I was playing with variations on my beach scene designs, looking for a suitable one to turn into the pattern.

I have now made five of these (click on the links to see them: Seaside, Breakfast on the Beach, Footsteps, Through the Arched Window and this one) since my first Beach quilt which was made using 2in squares and some small foundation-pieced sections. I find good sand fabrics hardest to come by, and deliberately designed this quilt without a beach section.

I off-set the rising sun, and marked portions of the water foundations where I wanted lighter fabrics, to represent the sun reflecting on the water.

In hindsight, I didn't pull this off too well (I needed more fabrics, narrower and more horizontal strips, and more contrast to achieve the look I wanted) but managed to give some of the effect with the quilting - this area of the water was quilted with yellow thread, in wavy lines ending on points while the rest of the water was quilted with blue and aqua threads, in curvy lines and swirls.

I think I've said it before, but these quilts get easier and easier as my collection of fabrics grows! And because I only use small pieces from each fabric, I know there are plenty more in my future; it's just a case of coming up with new designs.

I had some difficulty with thread breakages while quilting this quilt, and I think it was due to the fairly tough backing fabric - another lesson learned! Eventually I solved it by going up a needle size, from an 80/12 topstitch, to a 90/14, even though my thread choices wouldn't normally warrant this. Everything worked fine on my scrap sandwich with the other needle, and the only difference was the backing fabric on that - a piece of regular white cotton. The backing for this quilt is proper quiltbacking, and is the perfect colour/design for my beach scene quilts, but isn't quite as fine as it should be, and is quite stiff.

I quilted the sky in a cloud pattern using some super-fine (100wt) Wonderfil thread I bought at AMQF. It's a little darker than I had really wanted, but is beautifully fine. I did have breakage issues with it, too, but I will blame the backing rather than the thread for now. I really didn't want to go with an even bigger needle for that; on most things I would have used a 60 or 70 needle with such fine thread, and the 80 was leaving big enough holes already!

My new challenge is a variation on the theme. I have always loved snow and snowflakes (funnily enough, I don't actually like the beach!), and have a substantial collection of snowflake prints. Now I have started collecting snowy scenes etc, with the plan of making some snow-scene quilts.

Thank you for visiting! I will try to respond to all the comments I receive, and to visit all of your blogs in return.

For those of you who are new to my blog, I also do traditional piecing - but usually with a bit of a twist, applique, and am exploring wholecloth quilts. I hope you'll come back and have a look around - when you've got some time! The lists of my recent quilts by year on the right are actually links; just click on any to go directly to the main post about that quilt.

Now go and check out the rest of the fesitval entries: