Moonlight

My latest finish, Moonlight, uses Erica Jackman's pattern, Harper. It's a fun and easy quilt using basic Drunkard's Path blocks.

Some quilts are easy for me to to come up with quilting ideas for, and some are really really hard. For me, Moonlight was particularly challenging because of the printed background. Usually my quilts tend to have printed foreground components and solid backgrounds, so when I have a printed background, I really don't know what to do. The usual fillers I like to do in the background would all be too busy for the already busy background fabric.

But I know that dot-to-dot designs usually look good on prints, so that's what I did in the background. And as a bonus, dot-to-dot designs in the background blocks, when placed together, also create secondary designs. But I was also in the mood for some feathers.

I quilted the moons with an alternating design. It's definitely my favorite part of the quilt, it almost has a glow to it next to the indigo fabrics.

There are no solids to be found on the front of this quilt, which is pretty rare for me. But it allows me to quilt it on the lighter side, allowing for a cuddlier quilt than usual. It's really hard to see the quilting on the front though, but the back shows it well!

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Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation, Busy Hands Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Cooking Up Quilts, Powered by Quilting, and Meadow Mist Designs.

Unchained

My latest finish is a significant finish for me, not because the quilt or quilting itself is significant, but because of the mental process I went through when I'm quilting it, and I named it Unchained for two reasons.

First, of course it's a play on words, since it's an Irish Chain. The pattern is from Jenifer Dick and Angela Walter's book Nine-Patch Revolution. I did modify the size of the blocks so I could use a jelly roll, but the layout is the same.

More importantly, I named this quilt Unchained because by quilting it the way I did, it represents a sense of freedom. When I first started quilting on my longarm, I was just so swept up with how quick and fun it was to finish my tops, and I didn't worry about anything but that it looked good. I didn't worry whether I was being "creative", whether I incorporated at least X different designs, or whether it was "showstopping". But at some point, that started to change, and over the last year especially I was driving myself completely insane trying to come up with something crazy each time. It got to be too much, and there were times I stayed away from the longarm room for weeks on end because I was too daunted.

But with this quilt, I only made myself one promise: I wanted to keep it simple, and recognize that it's perfectly alright not to quilt every quilt like it's my swan song. This is my simplest (in terms of the # of designs) quilt in recent memory, and I feel a great sense of relief at finally breaking out of the chains I had placed on myself.

So, I kept the quilting simple with continuous curves in the Irish chains and an easy, zero marking dot-to-dot design in the negative space that also had a very efficient travel path.

I love the end result, and I especially love the sense of freedom I now feel. My blog is called Savor Every Stitch, not Driving Myself Crazy For No Reason. And hopefully, Unchained will help me to remember that.

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Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation, Busy Hands Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Cooking Up Quilts, Sew Can She, Powered by Quilting, and Meadow Mist Designs.

Think Pink

Happy September! I dreaded September when I was a kid, because I hated that summer was ending and school's starting ... but now, boy, do I feel the opposite!

The Shattered quilt from Jacquie Gering's book Quilting Modern has always been on my "someday" list, because it is so very aligned with my style. However, until recently, I wasn't ready to make it, because what I loved most about the quilt is actually the quilting: gorgeous echoing straight line designs, which is best done on a longarm using a ruler. But now that I finally have a longarm, I'm so ready to make this quilt! I decided on some coordinating hot pink fabrics and a gray for the asymmetrical borders.

I have to be honest, I actually hated making this quilt top. Not only were the improv blocks very stressful, but there are 8 border strips to put on! If I didn't like assembling a quilt, that's nothing compared to how much I hate putting on borders. The only thought that kept me going was how fun it would be to quilt this.

And quilting this really was so, so much fun. The main attraction of this quilt is the spirals in each of the sections in the improv strips part, and that part took forever to do for it was all ruler work, and each section required breaking thread. The result is totally worth it though, and if I wasn't 100% comfortable with rulers before I started this quilt, I sure am now.

To contrast with all those straight lines, I did some curvier designs in the gray borders. In the border all around the improv blocks, I did a very dense filler with swirls, pebbles, leaves, and lots of echoes. In the outer border, I did the wavy wavy design which is probably the easiest, most forgiving border design in existence.

I really love the back, too! Although I usually use extra-wide backing to avoid seams, I found some solid pink yardage on sale, and I thought it was just perfect for the back. Not to mention ... it really shows off the quilting, too!

This is one of the more modern quilts I've made, for sure. I really like it, and I'm quite mesmerized by the echo spirals!

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