Making Waves

I've been busily finishing this nautical-themed quilt. Most of the quilting is in the ditch, but it needed something in the large feature diamonds. I didn't want to do much, to avoid detracting from the print, and my first sketch was luckily exactly what I wanted - I was expecting to have to try several things, so I was really pleased my first go was successful.

I took some transclucent paper, laid it over the quilt, and put pencil to paper - first marking the edges of the shape. Then I used some small scissors to turn the design into a temporary template - cutting a channel about 2mm wide, and stopping in selected places the restarting, to ensure the template held its shape. Then I used a Clover white marker to quickly mark each block, alternating the direction of the wave in each row for a bit of variety. Before doing this, I tested the marker on a scrap of the feature fabric, then ironed it to remove it, and waited a while to check it was out properly - I now do this every time I mark a quilt, having being caught out before, even with products I've previously used.

I quilted the waves using navy Bottom Line, and am really pleased with the result.