Gone Bowling

The idea for this project came about one day when I thought about making a circle quilt with scraps. I wanted the circles on a lot of negative space, but didn't want to go with a traditional grid pattern. Then suddenly, the image of a top-down view of a bowling lane came to mind, and that became the inspiration for this quilt. I got out my sketchbook and did some rough planning.

There are two things I wanted to really play with in this quilt: striped circles for the bowling balls and free-motion quilting the "lane" space. For the circles, I used some leftover charm squares, and it's a combination of Northcott Urban Elementz and Moda Thicket.

For quilting the negative space, I sort of simulated the look of a bowling lane by quilting lane spaces, and in the spaces I filled each one with a different level 2 filler. I call them level 2 fillers because they're a lot more time-consuming and involved than my normal go-to fillers. But since the quilt is not big and it's a wallhanging, I quilted it to death and then added some more quilting.

In the "bowling pin" section, I quilted a different design into each circle. Some are more successful than others! I filled the areas around it with dense pebbles. That took a long time but is fairly mindless and relaxing to do.

In the lane space, I let it fly! This would have taken forever to do if it wasn't so small (42" x 26"). My favorite section in here is definitely the pebbled leaves.

This little quilt was great fun to do, and it functions as a quilting sampler. Eventually, it'll be hung in my quilting studio ... when I get around to finishing the space, that is!

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Link parties joined: Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Busy Hands Quilts, Crazy Mom Quilts, Sew Can She, and Cooking Up Quilts.