Sew Day in the Basement!

We had a great time loading on Laura’s beautiful sampler quilt, choosing a design to go on it, picking out a thread color to quilt it with, and seeing this flimsy top turn into a real quilted quilt!

Sometimes picking thread colors can be the HARDEST choice of all. How do you choose?

I pretty much live by the “unwind several different choices of thread over the quilt top, being sure to cross light and dark areas and pick the one that is the LEAST obtrusive.”

I want something that isn’t going to look too light in the dark areas, nor something that doesn’t shout out too dark in the light areas. Most of the times this means we go for something medium.

In Laura’s case we chose a medium toned lilac pink.

The label actually reads as “Wild Rose” – I had to walk over to the machine and pick up the cone and check it to satisfy my own curiousity as I was writing this post!

There isn’t an overabundance of pink in the quilt itself –there is “SOME” pink, but the pink thread just traveled so well from area to area and blended in with all the batiks--- be they brown, green, red, purple, blue, aqua, turquoise, yellow or cream. The pink was a happy mixer!

As a piecer, my focus is usually on the piecing first, and the quilting comes secondary. I want texture, LOTS of texture, but I don't want it to look like thread is just laying there on top. I want the thread to sink in and just leave me texture.

I love this swirly feather that Laura chose from the patterns I had available. And see? That pink thread adds to the colors in the quilt, but doesn’t stand out so much that it overpowers what is going on with the piecing. This swirly feathery design is called “Feather Meander #1" and is designed by Jessica Schick. Isn't it beautiful?

Here’s the whole quilt as it came off the machine:

Isn’t it fabulous?! One thing I’d love to point out…don’t just think because the blocks are already large….((The blocks before the borders are 12” finished)) that you can’t add MORE to them, making them even bigger, but at the same time adding more intricacy to the over all design. The simple framing inner border around each block brought more color to play within each block. The “Lady of the Lake” style triangle second border around each block is another place to add some dynamic motion. The final narrow sashings around the outside of the triangles bring another place for your eyes to rest a bit…and make it so you don’t have to worry about matching triangle seam to triangle seam if you were to join this quilt block to block to block as this one is.

And I love the final border that is just a “Use up whatever is left until it is gone” kind of happy parade.

It’s a winner, Laura, it really is!

PS…I write my posts in Windows Live Writer, and spell check does NOT like certain words. It always wants to say that piecer is not a word, and nor is sashings. I got tired of it and clicked “ADD TO DICTIONARY”. HA! Maybe now it will believe that I know what I’m talking about and not just making up words to be words. It also drives me nuts that any time I type SEW in a message on my iphone that it automatically ”corrects” it to SEE or SEEING instead of SEWING. I need to have a talk with Apple about that. They too need an “ADD TO DICTIONARY” feature!

Enjoy your Sunday, Everyone!

Love from the Basement ---