I spent the morning working on a project for a couple of my students (more about that tomorrow) and then I finished machine quilting the Great Aussie quilt and putting on the binding. I had such fun with the quilting on this. Just a lot of playing around and it didn't really matter whether I followed lines or what.
The animals in this quilt are from the original pattern but I made up my own flower patterns and added a dragonfly. There were so many cute Australian animals to choose from but I really didn't know any of the animals except for the koala, the crocodile and the frog so I limited myself to those (and I also wanted to make a wall hanging not a bed quilt.)
I quilted around all the figures and shapes and then did some background quilting of flowers and leaves hoping for a tropical look. I used an odd variegated thread for this and the dark parts are a bit strange. Maybe I should stop using this thread that leaves such obvious dark squiggles here and there... I'm trying to pretend they are vines in a tropical forest... Inside the leaves and animals I used a lighter pink variegated thread and that was a lot of fun to do and very forgiving of mistakes.
Since the blocks were so densely quilted I left the lattice and borders plain which may or may not have been a good choice. Once I got to the border I found that it stretched a bit even using the walking foot and so I started in doing repair work. This happens so often to me even with careful measuring. I should just learn to take off a half inch when cutting out a border. I ended up taking out a few inches of border and adjusting the length hit and miss. The border print is busy enough that it doesn't really show and if it bothers me I suppose I can quilt it a bit more and hide the wrinkles. I'm leaving it for now...Now I still need to get a sleeve onto this and get a label on the back.
Thank you Lorraine for the inspiration and the pattern!
10 comments:
I love it! I love it so much, Tanya! It's perfect and I love how you quilted it. Excellent job!
Wow! it turned out great! I like all the quilting you did, especially the feathers on the bird. I think that it must feel good to get a fun quilt done.
The quilting does look really good but you might want to think about doing some in the border. The *rule* of thumb is to have the density of your quilting the same throughout the quilt and you might find that a little more quilting in the border will balance the quilting in the center. Regardless, it's a very cute quilt and you did a great job.
Very, very sweet!
I am happy to hear that you had fun with the quilting...that's what it is all about! And you made a wonderful wallhanging. I'm sure your students will enjoy looking at this and learning all the animal names!
What a lovely quilt. It was interesting to read your comments about the quilting problems and how you solved them. You spoke about using a walking foot - did you use that for all the quilting, or did you use a darning foot for the free motion quilting in the centre of the quilt?
Congrats on finishing the quilt. It is gorgeous and glad to hear you have also 'master' machine quilting!
Have a good weekend! ;)
What a fun happy quilt! It makes me smile and I love your flowers. You did a great job!
Oh, I love the way your wall hanging turned out, and you did such a good job with all of it!
It's a great quilt! It is beautiful!!
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