A Great Start

The way that a seam is pressed makes a huge difference when you are quilting inside of the lines (not doing an allover design). I looked at this yesterday in the above photo and realized that the direction that the seams were going was just helter skelter. I have envisioned a quilting plan and the seams were going to be an issue. For my last quilt in this series it was not and issue because of the design choice I made. Well it was time to have a session with Jack The Ripper and pick out just the places where the seams needed to be flipped and resew them. It actually did not take as long as I feared. You can see the before in the top and the after in the bottom photo. When I originally pieced this I had no real quilting plan so I did not even give it any thought.

 So fast forward to the quilt on the frame. I have done something new which is to baste the entire top before quilting. That way it will not shift as I go back and forth with different thread colors. This is just a sneak peek at this quilt. It is the same piecing method as the orange and blue Over The Limit II but I am doing something very different with the quilting on this one. So far I am liking what is happening on the surface and think I have a great start!

Two Improv Quilts Finished

Over The Limit II

 I managed Three finishes for June. The first one was the Scrappy Trip Around the World I posted already. The Over The Limit series is something I have tried in two colorways so far. I actually decided to quilt the second one in the series first because I liked the bright vibrant colorway of the orange and blue. The quilting looks very simple and straightforward but it took forever. There were many stops and starts and Five thread color changes. Since I bury all my thread tails that made for lots of knotting and pulling those thread tails under the layers.

Over The Limit II (closeup)

 The next quilt is called Energy. It was the first thing that I stared in the past four years. I made it for a challenge for the About.com Arizona Quilt Retreat in Phoenix. The rules were very simple. The shapes had to be 2" by 2" or 4" or 6" or 8".  I had been looking at lots of improv quilts on Pinterest and found a few inspiration pieces. I loved the bright orange and deep blue colorway. I began by cutting the blue pieces. I pulled out fabrics and just cut the sizes above. Then I cut a series of orange and began laying things out till I liked the way it looked.

Energy

                     

Energy (closeup)

The quilting on Energy was really fun. I quilted lines across the blue. They are not spaced evenly........consistantly inconsistant. Some are only 1/8" apart. Then I did a swirling spike like little suns in the orange. I really love how this one came out.