Yesterday I got an early copy of Australian Patchwork & Quilting Vol 21 No 5, which includes my quilt The Gardens Meet as a project. I designed this quilt to use some of my favourite fabrics from Sandi Henderson - the Henna Garden print, and a few from Secret Garden - hence the name. The only exception is the white background (from Basic Grey's very popular Figgy Pudding a couple of years ago). This quilt comes together really quickly, because of the big pieces. It looks more complicated than it is, but you do have to be careful to get the right fabrics in the right places, or the effect is lost. I tend to get a bit challenged when coming up with simple quiting, because I often use high contrast farics - e.g. black or white backgrounds, then don't want to spoil the contrast with a single thread, which rules out allover quilting. I quilted this one in the ditch, all around the lattice - this took a while, and a few stops and starts. I kind of followed the edges randomly, then had to spend a while making sure I hadn't missed any - much easier done from the back if the backing is fairly plain. Then I got out my thick tracing paper and drew out swirl desgins to fit the different spaces. However, the quilting is completely unmarked; I just stuck the patterns on the wall by my sewing machine and quilted them freehand. I quilted the white x shapes below so they're symmetrical form the centre - but unless you know that, I now think it just looks as though I quilted them haphazardly, since the swirls vary in direction (going 'in', ' going 'out', or facing left or right!) considerably! Because it doesn't show, I quilted the busy setting triangles with a stipple. All the quilting was done with Superior BottomLine. Speaking of which, my new machine had a visit to the dealer's yesterday, and should now quilt much better with BottomLine and other fine threads - I can't wait to test it out, but I need to do some piecing first. For now, this quilt is in a large pile on my shelf. I do have a possible destination for it, but I'm not entirely sure yet, so if you are interested in buying it; leave me a comment.
