This is the quilt I have been working on forever it seems like...it is for my older daughter. In fact, she bought the fabrics at least a couple years ago. I thought the original plan was for her to come here and us work on one together...instead her life got awfully busy. And ours was pretty full for a time, too. So the fabric just sat.
After designing a couple or three different quilts in Electric Quilt, and showing them to my daughter, she chose this design. It is basically a Double Irish chain, only in a real Double Irish Chain, the blocks that are almost all tans here would be one fabric. And there is a difference in the choice of dominant fabric placement....and a couple other differences that doesn't make much difference anyway.
This quilt is machine pieced...and machine quilted. Free-motion quilted. That means I drop the feed dogs on my sewing machine, and put a special foot on the machine, and I feed and guide the quilt sandwich...I have to try to keep my foot pedal speed in sync with how fast I move the quilt under the needle, all while following the design. If I move too fast, while sewing too slow, I will have long stitches.The reverse of this is if I move the fabric slow, but put the pedal to the medal, the stitches are one right on top of the other...and impossible to rip out. There are not very many stitches that are too long, however it would be impossible to count the times I sewed too fast for the speed I was moving the fabric under the needle...but at least those don't really hurt anything.
I forget where I found the fleur de lis...I took it and had it enlarged, then used poster board to make a stiff pattern that I could lay on the quilt and trace around to mark the design on the quilt. Let me tell you, that was time consuming, plus after it was done the markings were hard to see.If you will enlarge this and notice the fleur de lis on the edge, you will see it is a bit different from the others. I had to redesign it to fit the space. The other fleur de lis go into the adjoining blocks a little bit...
The above photo is after it was washed and dried. It started as 87 1/2 inches. Quilting causes a little bit of shrinkage in size...but should have been much on this since there is not a lot of quilting. But I washed and dried it in the dryer because that is how it will be dried from now on...and its final finished size was 82 inches square. The batting said 3% shrinkage...but I don't prewash my fabrics either so some shrinkage there.
Beautiful. I really like the colors.
ReplyDeleteIt is really stunning! It will become a family heirloom!
ReplyDeletewow....it is absolutely gorgeous. i love the colors and the pattern.
ReplyDeletethis beautiful quilt will be here when you are gone. your family will be kept warm with it and tell stories about the very special woman named rose who made it for them with sooooo much love!!
Absolutely fabulous, Rose... I always love seeing your quilts... I am in AWE of people who can do this. The colors are AWESOME.... Love them.
ReplyDeleteHugs,
Betsy
Very pretty Rose, thank you for sharing with us! You should be very proud of the talents you have put into the quilt, I know your daughter will love having this quilt! Have a good week! Hugs for Lorelei!
ReplyDeleteTruly a work of art Rose!
ReplyDeleteThe colors are simply beautiful.
The fleur de lis's look like they were a lot of work - but worth it, the quilt turned out beautiful!
ReplyDeleteI've already told you how beautiful this is....but I will say it again...GORGEOUS! I really like the fleur de lis...worth the work.
ReplyDeleteabsolutely beautiful!! the fabrics, colors, quilting; love it! I am amazed that you quilted it on a domestic machine; there is no way I would have the patience lol.
ReplyDeleteRose I absolutely love it!
ReplyDeleteLooks perfect to me! I really like the colours.
ReplyDeletereally lovely, your daughter should be thrilled. I to am perplexed by the shrinkage. I always put my batting in the dryer on high to shrink it and get the wrinkles out but I still get some shrinkage.
ReplyDeleteYou did a marvelous job, Rose! I really love the pattern and the choice of colors! Your quilting looks wonderful, and I know what you mean about having trouble keeping the stitches the same with free-motion. I just can't seem to get the knack of it, and tend to quilt with the feed dogs UP. I am looking forward to getting back to my quilting and hope you will check my quilt blog periodically for posts after a few more weeks. All these boxes have been formidable to deal with! Check out my main blog if you get a chance and you will see what's been going on with me. Take care!
ReplyDeleteMarie