Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Flying Together Quilt Pattern

For today's Work In Progress Wednesday (linking with Lee at http://freshlypieced.com) , I am showing you the tricks I used to quilt my Flying Together Quilt, the pattern will be available for purchase by Wednesday of next week.

I used the Moda fabric line "Ladies Stitching Club-Oliver + S" by Liesl Gibson.  The colors were very bright and inviting.  However, it created quite a conundrum as to what threads to use.  Ultimately, I chose to use a variegated thread for the blocks and outer borders with a white thread for the micro-stippling around the applique.  What thread would you use?

All of these colors exist in the fabrics used in this quilt top.

While it appears a little dark in the photo, I chose the variegated thread on the left hand side as it matched the best.


I wanted the quilt to have an inner sash border that looked like it had some redwork (using the variegated thread) in it so I needed to custom quilt the project and rotate it on the quilt frame.  Here's how I did it.

Here is a close-up of the custom vine I put in the inner sash border.



While on the quilt frame, all of the quilt was quilted going from left to right, tying off in every block in between every pass, that way no  variegated thread showed up in the center white sashing.  The top and bottom outer borders were quilted as well, but not the inner border vine, or the left and right hand side border as I did those with feathers and wanted both borders to turn the corner.  The applique was also skipped as it could be done in one or two passes if the quilt was rotated with the white thread and one color of thread change.  In this orientation, a thread change would be required with every pass of the quilting machine.

The quilt was removed from the frame and rotated so it is now vertical.  It is then flipped upside down and attached upside-down to the backing bar (see photo below).  This way, when the quilt is attached to the take-up rollers, it is now facing up.



Now, there is one trick to ensure proper tension on your quilt top.  The quilt sandwich can slip with all of this removal and rotation, so it is important to advance the quilt first to catch it up to the quilted center panel, then work your way out from the center to the un-quilted sashing.


Once the inner sashed border was quilted and stitched in the ditch, the quilt was re-wound or advanced toward the quilter and off the take-up roller to quilt the outer border.  This ensures proper tensions without pinning.  It may be necessary to smooth with your hand towards the take-up roller to ensure even fullness of the quilt top and quilt batting.


Here is a close-up of the micro-stippling.  As I used a double batting in this quilt, it created greater stitch dimension.

 Last, but not least...the finished quilt being removed from the quilting machine rollers.  I really like how it turned out and I hope you do too!

Happy Quilting!

BTW, enter to win a free charm pack in my give-away page!  Click here to get more details:
http://moderntraditionquilts.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-customers-quilt-to-share.html