Full Moon Lagoon Quilt {Blogger's Quilt Festival}

A couple of days ago I finally got around to binding and washing my Full Moon Lagoon quilt, just in time for this round of the Blogger's Quilt Festival. 

We took it out to the beach today for a bit of a photo shoot. Unfortunately, it happened to be a typical Tasmanian spring day (snow on the mountain, 13 degrees Celcius, gale force winds), so most of the photos looked something like this:

and this:

Not quite the idyllic calm blue sea I'd imagined as a backdrop for this quilt ;o) We did manage to find a relatively sheltered spot a bit further back on the dunes though - so you can see a teeny peek of the sea behind. This is the quilt front

and back.

Finishing this quilt has been very much a proud mama moment for me. The piecing itself was a lot of fun and made me realise how much I enjoy improv piecing. This quilt is basically a whole lot of improv pieced log cabins, pieced together like a puzzle using extra strips of fabric as needed. The fabric I used is the gorgeous Full Moon Lagoon by Mo Bedell for Andover fabrics - plus a whole bunch of other coordinating fabrics from my stash (lots of Lizzy House, Tula Pink, Anna Maria Horner and a few others). 

I really pushed myself with the quilting - I wanted to add loads of texture to the quilt top, using motifs reminiscent of being underwater (ripples, bubbles, swirls etc) without detracting from the quilt top. For the quilting, I chose a range of 50wt Aurifil thread to blend into the fabric as much as possible, so it didn't dominate the fabric but would add an abundance of texture. My quilting is not at all perfect - it's the not-quite-circular swirls etc that jump out at me when I look at it - but I am really pleased with what I achieved on my little domestic machine. And my little girl absolutely adores it, which is what really matters :o)

Most of the following photos I took in the relative (non windy) safety of our house.

Washing this quilt has made a massive difference to all the texture, and it has made it surprisingly soft and drapey considering the density of the quilting. I've gone a bit overboard with the photos here - these are some of my favorite parts of the quilt.

I didn't notice until I was looking through the photos that I actually missed the bottom corner of this seahorse block. Whoops! My camera had a really hard time photographing the pink accurately - the photo above is the closest to the actual colours.

I left many of the larger images (seahorses, flowers etc) un-quilted - and as a result they pop up from the background really nicely.

I also left some random strips entirely un-quilted, just to add a bit more variety to the quilt.

I was avoiding these feet in photos during the entire photo shoot - so I had to add just one in here. My three year old daughter is completely smitten with her newest quilt which makes all the (many, many) hours that went into to it completely worth it :o)

For the binding, I decided to piece a bunch of the left over strips together, vaguely following the colours around the edge of the quilt. It doesn't quite match each section completely - but it does well enough for an improv quilt, I think!

I've decided to enter this quilt into the Home Machine quilted category in the Blogger's Quilt Festival. It is entirely quilted on my Bernina QE440 (the same machine I use to piece and quilt all my quilts). A few people have commented during the making of this quilt that they didn't think this kind of quilting was possible on a domestic machine. It absolutely is - it just takes a really long time and a lot of quilt wrangling. I think the quilting on this one took around 30 hours, done a few hours at a time.

Quilt Stats:

* Fabric - Full Moon Lagoon by Mo Bedell, plus a range of coordinating fabric from my stash. 

* Quilt design - improvisationally pieced using log cabins.

* Size - finished size is about 70" square.

* Quilting - done by me on my domestic Bernina.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the festival! Huge thanks to Amy for organising this event again - it's definitely one of my favorite blogging events of the year. 

xx Jess 

Full Moon Lagoon {Quilted}

I should probably have waited until I'd bound this quilt before doing this post - but I'm just so relieved it's finally quilted I couldn't wait. Don't worry, once it's properly finished I'll bombard you with more photos ;o)

I'm trying to get to grips with my camera's manual function in an attempt to get it to photograph colours accurately. The pinks are not as bright as these photos might suggest - so hopefully I will have worked it all out before the actual ta-da post. It's really overcast today too - so maybe with better natural light I'll get more true colours... 

All the quilting is done with Aurifil 50wt in a range of colours - the blue, green and light sections are all done with threads from Tula Pink's collection for Aurifil, and the pink and purple are solid colours (2545 and 2530).

I don't think I've shown you the back of this one yet? The quilting shows up really well on the back

I used the softer pinks that didn't make it into the front of the quilt and made a few simple log cabins. THe solids are Kona PFD and Kona Ash. I used Aurifil 2021 in most of my bobbins (I think I went through about 15 for this quilt - I lost count after a while.)

Now this is done, I can concentrate on finishing up my Marcelle. I did start quilting that last night, but felt like I was cheating on this quilt, so I decided to finish this up first ;o) I might be back in a few days with some more quilting photos. I also need to think of a good name for this one - suggestions greatly appreciated :o)

xx Jess

Second guessing

Thanks so much for all the comment love on my last post - you guys are the best! Last night and today (my child free day) the epic sea horse quilting adventure has begun. I've started by quilting the turquoise/aqua part of the quilt top. I'm using one of the variegated threads from Tula Pink's beautiful collection for Aurifil. Alex sent me these earlier in the year, in return for promises of a review of the threads (which is coming once I've used a few more of them. Needless to say, they have not disappointed so far!)

I've decided to quilt each 'log' in a one of about eight different designs - but now I'm second guessing myself. I would love some honest feedback - is it too much? Or does it work? This is about five hours work, so I'm not all that keen to unpick it (argh!) - but I'm a bit worried it will look too busy with all the different motifs.  

In other news, I finally broke my Instagram virginity yesterday ;o) I can really see the appeal of it now - like so many of you said, it's a brilliant way to micro-blog. Rather than bombard you with quilty progress on my blog, I'll be sharing it over there.

Back to quilting this monster!

xx Jess

Full Moon Lagoon Quilt Top

I have done a bit of improv piecing in the past - I'm not sure how I forgot how much fun it is! I have been working obsessively on this quilt top over the last week or so, and I'm in love :o) We've had some glorious spring weather in the last week or so - and the colours in this quilt just scream summer to me, so it's been a fitting project to work on.

I managed to include a heap of my favorite designers - loads of Lizzy House (mostly pearl bracelets and jewels), Tula Pink (Prince Charming greens) and even a bit of Anna Maria Horner. I tried to continue the fade-up effect - although the magenta and purples are much more saturated than the blues and greens, so it's not so much a fade effect between those (more a giant leap?). But still, it has come out exactly as I'd envisioned.

It's ended up fairly massive. I haven't trimmed the edges (I figure I'll do that once it's all quilted) - but at the moment it's around 75" square. The intended recipient of this quilt is my three year old daughter - so hopefully it will last her for many years to come ;o)

I didn't end up using any of the softer pink prints I had pulled out for it - so I'm going to use those in a pieced back.

It probably goes without saying, but I am extremely excited to quilt this one :o)

xx Jess

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced, and Quiltstory. 

WIP Wednesday - Full Moon Lagoon improv quilt

I haven't linked up with Lee for a long time - but I have a true work in progress at the moment so I thought I would this week :o)

The idea for this quilt has been percolating in my brain for a few months. I fell completely head over heels in love with Full Moon Lagoon by Mo Bedell after seeing this quilt made by the brilliant Julianna earlier this year. So last week, I started cutting the the panels up and putting them up on my design wall - with the darkest value prints in the bottom corner, moving up to the lightest prints in the top corner.

Then I pulled a stack of coordinating prints from my stash, and started making improv log cabin blocks around the panel prints. When I was choosing the prints I tried to keep the value fairly consistent - although I did add in a bit of variety value-wise in the purples (mostly because I didn't have a whole lot of really deep purple on hand.)

I have made the magenta blocks as well - and taken all the other bits off my design wall as I'm fast running out of space. I've snuck in a few pieces of Mendocino (by Heather Ross) as the colours and prints work absolutely perfectly with Full Moon lagoon. I think this is going to end up being an absolutely gigantic quilt - I need a much bigger design wall for this kind of piecing. Apparently making a bigger design wall and putting it in the hallway outside my little sewing room is completely out of the question ;o)

The plan at this stage is to add a fairly narrow row of orange prints above the magenta, followed by the greens. I am really enjoying putting these blocks together - and it's going to be quite a challenge working out how to put them all together. A lovely change from the precision required in the last couple of big quilts I've made ;o)

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced!

xx Jess