Mint Chocolate Chip Quilt Is A Winner!

Wow! I guess all the hard work was worth it! My Mint Chocolate Chip Quilt won three ribbons at the Silver City Quilt Guild Show this past weekend! 1st Place Ribbon in the Large Bed Category, Judge's Choice, and Best of Show-Guild Choice.
I am gushing for sure, because I really wasn't going for a ribbon at all and look what happened! Just wanted to quilt this quilt for myself and use some designs I had been aching to try.
Although I was under a deadline to be done for the judging, I really enjoyed doing the quilting and love how it looks, now that it's done. The full size picture doesn't really show off all the quilting unfortunately.

So here are some more closeups that show the texture and quilting better. Enjoy!

Probably my favorite blocks are these light squares. Each one is a little different, but love the effect!

This shot shows some of the texture of the quilting. Love the circular swirls!

Each block was quilted with a specific design.

The sashing was quilted using a piano key type motif accented with pebbles.

The dark green border was done using a ruler from Deloa Jones-Rope- A-Dope. Fun to use!

Fun feathers in the dark brown squares, with more pebbling in the centers, plus a closeup of some of the border and sashing quilting.

Great closeup of the border quilting. Love how this came out!

Summer Quilting Project is Done!

Completed Grasshopper Quilt draped over my couch after surviving a long day at the judging for the SCQG quilt show

Finally finished the Grasshopper Quilt!! Progress seemed to be slow at first, and I wasn't sure I'd have the quilt finished for the upcoming show on 9/21, never mind the judging which just took place on 9/14.  But after an exhausting 6 weeks, the quilt is finished and we survived the judging!

So when you ask "What did you do this past summer?" For me, it's basically been this one thing for the last 6 weeks: Quilting the Grasshopper Quilt with a deadline fast approaching. So the lesson I've learned, finally, is not to enter a quilt in to a show unless it is totally completed. I've really got it now!! Not doing that ever again!! I really didn't know what I was getting myself into! Doing such detail quilting REALLY takes a lot of time!

Lots of things have been put on hold, and my very understanding business partner, Mary Ann, has been picking up the slack big-time! So a huge thank you to her, and of course, I will return the favor whenever she needs me! We have a very close and wonderful friendship, and it makes going to our studio such fun every day! My wonderful husband has also been very understanding and supportive and I love him the more for it!

Okay, venting over, here are some pictures-enjoy!

For the large brown center squares, I chose a funky feather motif with pebbles in the spine (kinda reminds me of a caterpillar a little bit, but no worries!). The feather is diagonal in the square, so the orientation of the feathers changes depending on which side of the quilt the block is on. Together, the feathers in these large brown squares form a  secondary diamond in the center of the quilt due to this tilting.

Funky feather design in large brown block on left side of quilt

For the large light green centers, I chose to do a variety of background fills separated by curved lines. Each block on the quilt is a little different, but these were the most fun to do!

 

 You can also see the marking I had to do to get the piano key lines in the sashing spaced correctly. Probably the most tedious quilting on this quilt because every seam had to be ditched first, then marked, then stitched before I got to the fun quilting in the block centers.

 As you can see, all the blocks with the small brown and light green centers were quilted with a swirl design in the dark green area. This looks so cool-better than I expected again!

All the light green centers have pebbles, and the dark brown centers have curved crosshatching. 

 In both cases, the thread highly contrasts with the fabric-it's much lighter than the dark brown, and much darker than the light green--still the same thread though! And, it's basically the same color as the dark green, so it's shows up as tone-on tone quilting in the swirls. Awesome effect!

Will post more pictures of the entire quilt after I get it back to the studio this week.

Thanks for stopping by!

Dora

Grasshopper Quilt-Block-To-Block Quilting

So much quilting space, what should I do? Do you have this problem too? With all the input we can get our hands on these days, courtesy of the Internet, plus our personal libraries of quilt books and magazines, it's pretty difficult to decide what's the right or best way to quilt any quilt. Many of us struggle with that decision with just about every quilt and I'm in that boat too. Sometimes there are so many different things to try, I don't know which way to go!
I knew I definitely wanted to do a very detailed quilting job on this quilt for sure. But from there, my biggest decision was whether to quilt an overall flowing design that would basically ignore all the blocks and become a secondary element, or to quilt something self-contained in each block. Of course I spent plenty of time on the internet looking at Pinterest and a number of quilter blogs for any and all inspiration and spent many evenings sketching out different designs to see if they might work. Because this quilt has plain batik fabrics, either a block-to-block or an overall design would work, but in the end, most of my sketches seemed to favor block-to-block using a variety of pebbles, cross hatching, McTavishing, swirls, curls, and on and on, so I went with it and started quilting all the blocks separately.

This quilt has 4 different blocks, two with large center squares and two with small center squares. To simplify the process, and get the quilting going (I still had a deadline looming) I chose different motifs for each of those blocks, and except for some small variations, I stuck with those motifs throughout the quilt.

Then I needed a design for the sashing and the two outer borders as well. All of those needed enough quilting to balance with the tight quilting I was planning for the blocks. After measuring and sketching, I came up with an interesting detailed design that really filled the brown outer border. And decided to use a special ruler on the inner border that would hopefully not be too time-consuming. For the sashing, I decided to do some vertical/horizontal piano keys and pebbling in the corner where 4 blocks would meet.

Here are some early shots of the border quilting in progress:

These show the arch quilting motif I did on the brown border.

A happy accident-I didn't realize the thread I chose had such a high contrast with the brown border fabric, it really gives the border a lacey appearance-love this! 

Will post again shortly-deadlines are here!

Dora