Winter Windows

A couple of days ago my Winter Windows quilt was returned to me safely, along with a copy of Australian Patchwork & Quilting Vol 21 No 11. I'm thinking of replacing the quilt on the wall in our bedroom with this one if it isn't too long.

 

 

I've shared quite a few peeks at the quilting on this one ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, ), as I'm so proud of it, and I hope you'll indulge me while I share a few more today - but I'll never know if you scroll past them while you roll your eyes!

 

Without wanting to repeat too much of what I've already said about this quilt, it was designed to use up the star blocks which I made the wrong size for another quilt.

I used a double layer of batting (one plain cotton, one wool/cotton) to help the detailed quilting stand out. While it definitely achieved that, and I won't rule it out in future, it's not something I'd do again in a rush without a long-arm, as it was a pain to manoeuvre, and this quilt isn't huge (approx 52 x 65in; or 133 x 166cm).

All the quilting was done using Superior BottomLine thread, in white and light aqua. I used a variety of marking, freehand designs and filler patterns. All marking was with a Sewline vanishing marker; the marks totally vanished quickly - from memory they were faint after about 3 hours and completely gone within 12 hours. I used the same pen again recently and the marks lasted much longer, and eventually I lightly sprayed them with water. This has the effect of instantly making them really, really bright, but they fade and vanish quickly. Some reappeared a little when sprayed a second time after drying, but then remained gone. I noticed this time that the marks on the plain homespun (solid) lasted much longer than those on the batik prints, which vanished on their own in about a day.

The lines and swirls on the star block (above) are done completely freehand; no marking.

I created a template and used it and a ruler to mark the quilting lines and a few guidelines for the main motif between the stars:

I used a ruler to mark the triangles in the border:

I free-hand marked the ends of the curved cross-hatch lines (both in the borders, and in the blocks), then drew the lines in freehand before quilting them:

With all the dense quilting, I really wich I'd taken note of my machine's stitch count at the start and finish, but based on the stitches in the queen-sze quilt I just finished, I estimate this to have in the vicinity of 250,000 stitches and include about 2km of thread.

I love the filigree filler I used in this areas, but did get sick of quilting it towards the end. Amazingly, after the filigree, the pebbling in the border triangles seemed almost fast!

The colours in this quilt were difficult to photograph accurately, and even with some editing aren't spot-on. The photos where the dark teal is greener (rather than blueish) are the closest to the true colours.

I initially tried a different pattern (parallell lines) in the alternate triangles in the border, but the curved cross-hatch ended up being a much better option, and worth unpicking the 2 or 2 trial triangles.

It's featured as a project from page 104 of the new issue of AP&Q, and I included detailed instructions and a couple of templates to replicate the quilting as well as the piecing.