Icy

My latest applique quilt, Icy, is is the new issue of Australian Patchwork & Quilting magazine (Volume 24 Number 3) which should be available in stores locally any day now.

It's the Christmas issue, but I chose to use my special snowflake fabrics (even the background fabric is a white-on-white snowflake print!) because I love the colours and of course the imagery, even though it's hardly representative of an Australian Christmas!

All the applique pieces are shaped like feather plumes, and were appliqued at the same time as the quilting; shown in the photo below:

I use Lite Steam-a-Seam2 for all my fused applique. It gives the best hold without adding stiffness and prevents fraying effectively, plus I love the temporary hold you can get from the heat of finger-pressing the pieces in place. It's finally back in production and hopefully back on the shelves after almost a year - read the story here. Fortunately I had (have) a large roll on hand!

Some of the smaller plumes ended up with little snowflakes positioned really nicely at the tips! The aqua plumes are only about 1.5" long.

The texture is lovely; I could spend ages running my fingertips over this quilt!

All the applique is done first in matching threads, then I filled the background in white McTavishing. My McTavishing style is constantly evolving. This time I experimented with breaking up the larger expanses with some longer, curvier swirls and used more echoed Cs to fill in spaces that I have previously.

Oops! I've just noticed a tiny unquilted gap in the photo above - can you spot it? It only needs a single line adding; I'll do it next time I'm quilting.

I've also realised that plume applique shapes placed in some sort of circular formation is becoming a bit of a habit recently, for example:

(Louise)

(Splash!)

Hmm. There are a few more plume appliques on another upcoming quilt, too! As much as I love them, it's time for a change, I think!