Sushi!

If you've been following me for a while, you may remember some peeks of the Sushi quilt I made (pattern testing for Sonja of Artisania). Well, the pattern is now done and available in Sonja's pattern shop, and I can reveal my quilt in full at last :o)

If you haven't seen her work before, Sonja is an absolute master of paper pieced pattern designs. She designs some really, really cool stuff (example: a quilt entirely made of paper pieced Converse shoes? yes please!) I went into this pattern as a total paper piecing novice - as in I had done zero paper piecing before this. I was a little dubious about my ability to do it, but shouldn't have been. Sonja's tutorials and instructions are brilliant, and made the whole process so clear and easy.

Probably my favorite part of my quilt is the teapot. I used a lot of Melody Miller fabrics in the quilt top, and love how they give it a bit of texture.

I also love the udon bowl and tea cup. It's a bit hard to see the quilting in these shots but I only quilted the background and left the paper pieced bits unquilted. And yes, that is my (awful) handstitching around the white rice (and on several of the sushi pieces).

 I used my new favorite (and super easy) FMQ motif - echo shells. Takes a bit longer than stippling, but I love the texture it gives, and it is nearly as quick as stippling - and it's easy to do in and around tricky shapes.  I normally use organic bamboo batting (similar weight and drape to cotton batting), but I knew this quilt was destined to be a wall quilt as opposed to a bed quilt, so I used a piece of polyester batting someone had given me. The loft is much, much higher than what I'm used to and it works really well in this quilt. The quilting has given the background a wonderful puffy texture, and the sushi, teapot and bowl kind of 'pop' out from the background.

The quilt in all it's glory:

The inner border is quilted 1/4" away from both edges, the pieced border is unquilted, and then the outer border is quilted 1/4" away from the inside edge - so all the borders are a bit puffy too. The pieced border is almost exclusively Melody Miller fabrics (apart from the pearl bracelet and the empire weave). 

 I really, really enjoyed making this quilt - it was a fun, low stress project and it's destined to be a wall quilt in our kitchen.

x Jess