Hellooooo Amy's followers.
Below you will find my entry into this year's Bloggers Online Quilt Festival. Since this is my first entry, I am very excited.
The quilt is titled Mountain Mama's Garden. I've done several quilts focused on the hills of West Virginia; the earlier ones were wall hanging sizes, but I've wanted to do a big quilt using this theme for quite some time. Last fall, I took a class in crazy quilting and decided to try a crazy quilt landscape. And VOILA!
The Process
I love the effect of light caught in facets of space that is created by the crazy block form and the mix of color values. I enjoyed making this quilt. Piecing the blocks was exciting and I couldn't wait to finish that part. A few weeks before I began this quilt, I'd purchased some gold and silver thread at a yard sale that seemed perfect for hand quilting the sun and a few rays.
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| A closer view. |
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| My sun center rather resembles a bird. Hmmmm, maybe a phoenix. |
I debated back and forth between hand quilting and machine quilting. I have a fairly new Handi-quilter 16 and decided quilting this piece would give me more practice in using it. So I machine appliqued a few clouds in the sky and echo quilted around them. Then, I quilted the hills, and lastly the flowers. The machine quilting went well until I got to the hills and changed threads. It seems the tension went haywire. It didn't return to normal even stitching until after I'd finished that section and changed treads again. I learned that I need the same kind of thread on the spool as in the bobbin for smooth quilting. Each time I use my handi-quilter, I learn new things. My handi-quilter is the sit down model, with the table, so all quilting is hand guided. As I am still learning to machine quilt, tips and suggestions are very welcome.
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| Mountain Mama's flower garden. |
I am so happy blogger is back up and I can participate in this spring's Blogger's Online Quilt Festival.
