Lotus

I did a lot of longarm quilting last year but I was not in the mood for piecing for much of the year. Finally toward the end of the year I decided to piece Lotus, because I just loved the fabric too much and it demanded to be played with. Both the pattern (Lotus) and the fabric line (Bluish) is by Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic, who is my all-time favorite fabric designer.

When I started designing the quilting for Lotus, all I could think of were feathers. I love the beautiful elegance of feathers but they don't work for every quilt, but I just knew it'd look great here.

But I wanted to quilt a few blocks differently, so I quilted swirls in a block here and there.

I kept to very simple straight lines in the darker colored fabrics. Bluish is so stunning that I really didn't want the quilting to overwhelm it.

I was so excited to get to quilt all these feathers, and so happy with the final finish. Next to straight lines, feathers are one of the my favorite designs to run my hands over.

Compared to how heavily I usually quilt my quilts, Lotus is pretty lightly quilted, which means it actually feels kind of squishy in my hands. I'm really in love with it!