Atria (a finished quilt)

This weekend I finished up this pixelated heart quilt which I started rather a long time ago.  The quilt top was made using Jolene's pixelated heart quilt tutorial, using 2.5" squares.  I've been waiting to quilt it for a long time.  I wanted to quilt feathers on this quilt, but I hadn't really quilted feathers before and I was nervous.

Even though it wasn't really meant to be included in Krista Withers' compositional quilting class, Krista taught us how to quilt feathers.  Feathers are notoriously tricky but Krista shared a technique for making them easier.

Anyway, I did this quilting on my Juki, mostly free motion, but also using my walking foot a little bit (for the stems of the feathers and the straight diagonal lines).  After I quilted the feathers, I added in the straight lines to divide up the space (one of the key concepts from Krista's class was dividing the space into different segments and using different quilting designs to fill them).  I then filled in the unquilted spaces using two different motifs - paisley with bubbles and straight(ish) lines.

 

I really had to throw a solid fabric on the back of this quilt.  Nothing else shows up detailed quilting as well as a solid!

 

I will pop a label on this quilt and then I really want to send it through the washing machine and see how it changes after washing.  At QuiltCon, I got to touch a couple of quilts that Leanne (shecanquilt) had quilted very densely and then washed a couple of times.  They were so much softer than I expected!  The paisley / bubble quilting is pretty dense so I think this quilt could use some softening up.

I am pretty thrilled with how this quilt came out.  I'm really inspired to keep working on my free motion quilting.  It's all about the practice!

Have you been working on your free motion quilting skills lately?

This quilt was definitely on my Q1 list for the 2015 FAL!  See you very soon for the Q1 finishes linky!

WIP Wednesday

What?! I'm posting WIP Wednesday on an actual Wednesday (not a Thursday like the last two times I tried to do WIP Wednesday)?! What is the world coming to??

Actually, the world has been set to right because I am back home after a couple of months working in another city during the week. It really cramped my sewing style, even if I did take my (backup backup) sewing machine up with me after the first few weeks. That's not a typo by the way, I now have three sewing machines. Oops.

So what did I do to celebrate my return to Wellington? Cut up fabric into little squares and then sewed them back together, obviously. Ever since Jolene of Blue Elephant Stitches posted her Pixelated Heart Quilt, I've wanted to make one myself. But I never really had a reason to make one. But then she made another one, and Amanda at A Crafty Fox made another, even bigger one and then my friend Lara made this one (and started making this one) and then my friend Anne made a heart quilt as well and then I HAD to make one RIGHT NOW.

So I did and this is it.

Jolene's original pixelated heart quilt is still my favourite iteration of this pattern and I spent a bit of time looking at it to work out why. I think it's that all those ultra saturated Kaffe Fassett fabrics really glow against the very muted creamy peachy background. In more technical terms, there is a high degree of contrast between the heart fabrics and the background fabrics. So, I shamelessly copied Jolene's approach. I took leftover squares from the darkest, most saturated end of the spectrum of fabrics in my I See Fire quilt , and then used the softest, lightest creamy and peachy fabrics in my stash for the background. Seriously, I have a pretty good collection of low volume fabrics and these were whispering compared to most of them.

And I love it. I'm giving it to the cats, obviously. Now to raid my stash of cat fabric for the backing...

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced:

P.S. If you're looking for my Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day giveaway, it's here.