Compass quilt process, day three

Yes, day three on this quilt.  The first day was spent stabilizing the quilt with SID.  The second day was spent laying in the pebble borders to emphasize the diamond design of the entire quilt.

Today I’ll be starting on the feathering in the center of the quilt.  I’m not sure entirely where I am going with this yet, it will evolve as I go.  I have 3 goals with this feathering.  First is to emphasize the direction on the points of the compass, second is to take up the remainder of the fullness in the background, and third is to not overwhelm the piecing.  (Remember, this customer wanted the piecing to take center stage and the quilting to be the supporting player, so that is what I am doing.)

Here’s a peak at what I put in late last night to get a feel for how the feathering will lie in the corners:

And for size perspective here’s the feathering with a dime on it:

Yes, I have a full day ahead of me!

Compass Quilt process

This week I’m working on a compass quilt for a customer and I thought I’d share the process of custom quilting that I do.

This quilt is entirely hand-pieced and absolutely gorgeous.

If you look closely at the corner, you’ll notice a little bit of a wave in the border as it hangs on the hanger.  That little clue told me that the very first thing I had to do with this quilt was to stabilize it.  In stabilizing the quilt, I use SID (stitch in the ditch) and measuring markers to stabilize the quilt square.  The top corner went wonderfully:

The bottom didn’t go quite as well, which is not uncommon to find in quilts with mitered borders and utilitizing a border print.  It’s very tricky to make everything come out matching and perfectly square.

When I first started longarming in 2003, this would have terrified me, but I can now recognize it as manageable, yes manageable.  Notice the pink measuring tape at the bottom edge of the picture?  That’s what I use to make sure everything is advanced square as I stabilize the quilt.

So, how does one control that bit of excess in the background?  Well, after you’ve stabilized the quilt, you’ve got to use some sort of quilting to eat up the excess.  For this quilt I’ve chosen to emphasize the diamond shaping and use a pebble technique to eat up a little bit of that excess:

This isn’t a fast process, but it is an effective process.  I’ll spend most of today finishing the pebbling and the diagonals around the flying geese.  If I get that completed today, it will have been a full day.

Why am I posting this?  Because sometimes as longarmers we are intimidated when a quilt is loaded and presents challenges for us.  AND as a customer, I think it’s important for you to understand the process of quilting on custom quilts.  So follow along with me this week as I quilt this quilt, I promise it will turn out to be gorgeous (I can see the finished product in my mind’s eye!).

This and That

Well, as soon as I got back on schedule, I had to go and get myself sick…(no, not the flue, not h1n1….just a mild case of pneumonia)  Yep, threw the schedule all out the door, but it did give me time to rest and hand turn some bindings, something I had been neglecting.

So, what have I done in the last week?   Almost NOTHING…….only one quilt went out of the studio, a few more blocks got made for my flannel quilt, some bindings got turned, I watched more mindless tv (or slept tv on the couch) than I have in years.  I did manage somehow to make a total chaotic mess of my studio (probably from dropping stuff to do “later” when I had the energy).

But, what I did get done I’m liking.  First the pieced blocks,

I have no pattern for this, just some math measurements that I’m playing with.  No set pattern, no set design, yet.  Mindless (almost) quilting time, a rare pleasure!  Of course, when I do math it always comes out interesting.  I have 58 blocks here, and I either need 56 for a 7×8 set  or I need 64 for an 8×8 set.  Of course what I’d really like for size is to have an 8×9 set, which means I have to do more math to figure out how many more blocks to make.   Hmmmm, maybe this will need some plain blocks for the eye to rest on?  ;>)  That may just be the plan!!!!

I did get one customer quilt done.

The customer wanted to keep the quilting in the lower end of my pricing range, but I didn’t have a pantograph that would suit the quilt.  I knew that to keep the pattern overall, it needed to be simple so as to not detract from her piecing.  What I ended up doing was to use a sashing pattern as an edge to edge.   Once I flipped the 2nd row of the pattern end to end, and then flipped the first row upside down, it became a pretty overall pattern that suited the quilt perfectly.  Just one of the many reasons I love having the computer guided system available to me!!!  It’s so much easier to play with a pattern and get it perfect for the quilt!  A few closeups:

Well, I’m off now to try to reclaim that cutting table in the first photo………try……..that’s all I can do is try………  aw the dream of a big studio with places for everything and clean counters…..  but of course, I’d only mess it up with piles of even more “stuff”.  ;>)