Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Irish Chain off the Frame Today, Whew!

This big ,90 x 104, Irish Chain just came off the frame.  Yes, every little 2 inch square is quilted. Well almost. I did a continuous curve in all the red squares and left the white ones empty. This holds all edges down and makes the white ones "pop" to emphasis the chain.


Feathered Irish Chain

My client chose a feathered design to quilt in the centers and we used a orange/gold Omni thread to pick up the color in the black fabric. I love this design in the quilt, it looks so good with the straight lines in the chains to complement it.
4 borders !

This Irish Chain is to be a gift and needed to be bigger than the pattern size. Four borders were added and a corner  nine patch. It was challenging to come up with border treatments that worked, but I think the Ribbon Candy border and the Fancy Squares really make this a special quilt.  In the nine patch I quilted a block called "Fancy Feathered  Nine Patch". Fitting



I learned a few lessons with this. I could have turned the quilt and loaded it sideways, the long way. It would have saved some time. At the time I was focused on the feature fabric, the black, with it's directional print and didn't want to end up with it having upside down quilting. As it turned out, none of the quilting designs were directional!  It's always a trade off. Sometimes if you turn it sideways the straight of grain in going vertically and not as easy to control. You can end up fighting pleats and puckers on the back. Especially with a pieced back , as this was. I prefer to load with the grain going horizontally when I can.

We chose a gold thread for this, but it would also look good in charcoal, red or even a variegated.  The batting was the clients Warm & Natural and has a very low loft for the traditional look wanted
Pretty quilt, pretty quilting! I'm sure the lucky recipient will enjoy it!.

1 comment:

  1. it's a a great quilt-loading can be touchy with pieced backs for sure!

    ReplyDelete