Peppermint Bark {a finished quilt}

April was a pretty busy month for me - my son turned 10, we had school holidays for a few weeks, plus throw in Easter, work and me learning how to use a longarm. Let's just say it was a full month! Nevertheless I managed to finish a few small projects, and I'm excited to be able to share one of these with you today. This is my version of the Peppermint Bark quilt, a brand new quilt pattern by It's Sew Emma for Fat Quarter Shop. 

I made the crib-sized version of this quilt - and although I don't have any baby girls to give it to, it's the perfect playmat for my daughter to use when she's playing with her Sylvanian toys. I used a few prints by Sarah Jane I've been hoarding for ages (along with a Joel Dewberry herringbone print), and chose a grey solid for the background. I deliberately chose a solid, as I knew I wanted to have some fun with the quilting on this one, and solids are awesome for showing up complex free motion quilting. It's a great pattern for small and medium scale prints - and these blocks sew together really fast.

I used two layers of wool batting for this quilt, which is why there's that awesome puff in the unquilted areas. I love using two layers on small quilts, especially if the intention is that they're going to be used on the floor. Not only does it mean the quilting shows up wonderfully, it also means it's super comfy for kids to sit on while they're playing. All the quilting is done in my favorite 50wt Aurifil thread - Dove (2600). It has blended flawlessly into the grey solid, and just leaves all that lovely texture.

The back of this is a border print by Sarah Jane, so it's pretty much a double sided quilt. I'm quite certain my daughter will end up using this side for her games (she has been asking for a playmat with water and grass on it for some time - I think this fits the bill pretty well!)

I'll be back later this week with some very exciting news - and I'll have another finish to share next week (I just need to get the binding on it!).

xx Jess

A wee bit of FMQ {Suzy Q Panel for BERNINA Australia}

Back in March, BERNINA Australia contacted me to ask if I'd be interested in quilting a small panel to be part of a display in their booth at the Australasian Quilt Convention (AQC) this year. Of course I said yes (I mean, what an honour!), and had a LOT of fun quilting it. A group of textile artists and quilters from around Australia have been busy working their magic on these panels, and I really wish I could make it to AQC this year to see them all hanging together - it will be a fabulous display, and it will be so interesting to see how people approach it. If any of my readers are going to AQC this year, I would be forever in your debt if you could snap a few pictures of the display for me, so I can see what they all look like together!

It took me a few weeks to decide how I wanted to approach the quilting on this. The panel measures about 45cm x 75cm, and features a girl's face with flowers in her hair and a really cool geometric hexagon-type design. I knew I wanted to play around with geometric quilting in and around the hexagon, but I was a bit stumped as to what to do around the face. In the end, I decided to roughly outline quilt the flowers and leaves and facial features, and then surround the face with swirls. I haven't done any FMQ since November last year, so it was really lovely to spend a few hours quilting this up last week.

I used Aurifil 40wt (2021) for the swirls and outline quilting. It blends amazingly well into the background fabric, and even for the outline quilting. I probably could have used a darker thread for the facial features, but I love that the white thread has given her face definition without distracting from the printing on the panel. It also meant I could be a bit more 'sketchy' with my quilting (and it wouldn't be too obvious if I didn't quite quilt right on the printed lines), whereas using a darker (ie charcoal) thread would have required far more precision and would risk looking pretty dodgy if I missed those lines!

The geometric quilting is all free motion quilted using Aurifil 40wt in a variegated orange/yellow (4658). I love using variegated threads, and I particularly love how this one plays with the soft, warm colours in the panel. I love doing this kind of random geometric straight line FMQ - it's fast and so much fun to do! Plus it gives such a great texture, and looks pretty fabulous alongside curvy quilting such as swirls or pebbles. 

 If you're lucky enough to be going to AQC over the next four days, please go say hi to my little quilt - and check out what is sure to be a fabulous display from talented quilters all over Australia! If you are on Instagram and manage to get a photo, please tag me (@ElvenGardenQuilts) so I can check it out :o).

xx Jess

Flow {A Finished Quilt}

Wow, it's been a long, long time since I've shared a quilt finish in this space! It's nice to be back - and I have several quilts and quilt tops I finished toward the end of last year that I'm hoping to share over the next few weeks. The first two I'll be showing you were made essentially in secret - that is, I resisted my usual tendency to completely overshare what I'm working on. The main reason for this was that both of these were made specifically for the challenge categories for QuiltCon 2016, so I wanted them to be a bit of a surprise *if* they were juried into the show. Neither of them got accepted, so I'm kind of excited to be able to share them at last!

The quilt I'm sharing today was made for the Michael Miller Luxe challenge - she's called Flow and she was a really fun quilt top put together. This is a fairly long post, as I'll be showing a bit of my process as well as a few pictures of the final quilt, so please bear with me! I would normally split this much information across a few blog posts - but I'm making up for my recent lack of blog posts by giving you a single enormous post ;o).

Mid last year, the Modern Quilt Guild offered members the opportunity to sign up for the Michael Miller Luxe challenge, one of the special categories that would be part of the QuiltCon 2017 show. Everyone who signed up for the Luxe challenge was sent two half yard pieces of fabric, in one of the colour stories below. Participants were then allowed to add ONE cotton couture solid to these, and to use any of the Luxe range of fabrics in their quilt. The fabrics I received were the middle two, and I then added a deep teal cotton couture to these, as well as solid white and grey Luxe fabrics.

I have to admit, these fabrics sat in a pile on my cutting table for a good few months before I started getting some ideas about what to do with them. These fabrics are sheeting fabric rather than quilting cotton, and as such have a slightly different sheen (they are quite shiny) and have a wee bit more stretch than regular quilting cotton. I was a little bit nervous about working with them, but eventually I decided improv curves were the way to go, and I started making a few blocks, without any real plan as to what I'd do with them. Apologies for the poor lighting in the next few photos - my design wall has overhead fluorescent lights, which make it really hard to get good pictures of the whole wall. 

Initially, I made a few blocks, thinking I would position them so that there was a continuous improv curve from top to bottom down the quilt. 

But as I kept making blocks, I decided to lay them out more randomly, with more negative space between and around the blocks. At this point I hadn't ordered any solids for the background, and my initial thought was to surround them all with white, and to create continuous curved lines through the quilt with quilting.

But, when I sat down to order the solids, I decided at the last minute to get some grey as well as white, and use this to create some more movement in the negative space. I think this is what I love most about improv quilts - it's such a playful process, figuring out layout and design on the fly. Working with an idea, testing things out and discarding ideas that don't quite work.

I had a love-hate relationship with this quilt the entire time I was piecing it. Thankfully, I have a really awesome quilty friend (kat) who was happy for me to bombard her with photos and questions as I was working on it. I think I've grown so used to oversharing my projects on social media as I'm working on them, that working on something in secret made me feel like I was in a black hole in some ways. I needed the opportunity to get constructive criticism when I was making this, or I honestly think I would have abandoned it. 

In the end, this quilt was a weird combination of improv curves, and some pretty intense precision piecing to get those curves to form a continuous line through the quilt top. It was a really fun challenge, so despite those times I didn't like it, I still enjoyed the process. And seriously, this quilt was SO much fun to add texture to. Quilting is a super important part of quilt making for me - and the whole time I was piecing it I was thinking about how I would quilt it, to add to the sense of movement in the quilt top, and add loads of texture without detracting from the design. I forgot to take a photo of the top before I quilted it, so this is it in full. After I'd finished piecing, I decided to orientate the curves across the quilt, rather than top to bottom, and I much prefer it this way around :o).

As always, I did all the quilting on my little domestic Bernina (440QE), but because it's a reasonably small quilt (around 60" square) it was a really enjoyable quilt to quilt. I decided to use batting with a bit of loft to make all the quilting stand out, so I chose a Wool/Polyester batting - it's become one of my favorites to use. The batting, combined with the fact that it's made from sheeting, has resulted in the softest quilt I've ever made, despite all that dense free motion quilting.

All the quilting on this one is done in Aurifil 50wt - white, dove and a few different blues to blend in with the fabrics. Although I've recently used a few other weights of Aurifil for quilting (40wt and 28wt), for this quilt I decided 50wt was the way to go, as I wanted the quilting to blend into the fabric as much as possible, just leaving all that texture.

I don't often piece backs for my quilts - but I had a few bits of the Luxe grey and white left over, as well as a bunch of half-metre pieces of various blues, aqua and teal cotton couture that I pieced together for this one. Solids are the BEST for showing up quilting :o).

Thanks for making it this far in a pretty epic blog post! As I said, I have a few more quilts to share, which I hope to do over the next few weeks. I've made a few fairly major life changes this year (all good ones) which will mean I have more time and energy to blog more regularly. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy talking about and sharing my projects here, so you'll have to put up with my rambling a bit more frequently from now on...

xx Jess

Improv quilt quilting progress

So, somehow it's been almost a month since I posted here (although I'm sure most of you are used to my erratic-blogging ways by now!) April was a bit of a blur, with 10 days in Melbourne for AQC - but since we got back I have been sewing up a storm. Over the last few weeks, I finished piecing my improv quilt top and started quilting it last week. I didn't manage to get a good photo of the quilt top before I basted it, so you'll have to wait for the big reveal when it's finished for that!

The entire time I have been piecing this quilt, I've been bustingly excited about quilting it. Not that I didn't enjoy the piecing part - it's been the most fun I've had making a quilt ever, quite seriously. I didn't have all that much of a plan when I started quilting - I just knew I wanted lots of organic straight lines (free motion quilted of course!) with a few pockets of curvy designs. I started out in the yellow/ochre block of colour, slowly getting a feel for what I wanted to do. I've used two different yellow variegated 40wt Aurifil threads in this section - a darker thread in this area (until I finished the spool),

and then a lighter (orangey yellow) variegated thread for the rest of the yellow block and out into the low volume. Once I got into the low volume area, I hit my stride with the quilting, very much inspired by the grey Carolyn Friedlander print in the photo below.

You can see here how much that fabric inspired this quilting - and the texture is just amazing. Because many of the low volume fabrics I've used have a grid-type design in them, I have actually done virtually zero marking on this quilt - I've used the fabrics as a guide instead.

 Earlier this week, I managed to start quilting the orange section. I'm using a variegated coral coloured Aurifil 40wt for the orange section - and I'm really surprised how well it blends into these fabrics. There is a big variation in tone and value through this section, and although I initially questioned this choice of thread, it works amazingly well.

You can definitely see it on the lighter fabrics, but it's proven to be a real chameleon thread across the others. I felt this thread was a bit dark to use on the low volume areas though, so I switched to a variegated grey 40wt for the low volume section near the oranges.

Considering I only got this quilt basted last Wednesday, and I haven't really spent all that much time quilting it (about 15 hours I think?), I can't really believe it's almost half quilted. This quilt has stolen my heart, completely and utterly. It's my absolute favorite, and I see many more improv adventures for me this year!

You can see a few areas I've left unquilted - some of these I will go back and free motion quilt, but others I will add a bit of hand-quilting too. And some of them will be left alone, happily puffy among all that textured, tactile quilty goodness.

 xx Jess

Aviatrix Medallion {Finished at last!!}

A few days ago, I finally finished sewing the binding down on my Aviatrix Medallion, so this epically epic quilt is finally (almost!) finished! Aviatrix has been roughly a year in the making, so I hope you're not sick of seeing it quite yet (I know I've been sharing it quite frequently over the course of piecing and quilting it!). I still have a lot of thread burying to do, but it is essentially finished - so this is the last time you'll have to see it ;o). 

I made this quilt as a class sample for the class I taught at Frangipani Fabrics last year (and will be teaching again this year), and all the fabrics in the quilt are from Frangipani. The Aviatrix Medallion pattern is designed by Elizabeth Hartman, and I stuck pretty closely to her original palette, but I've used print fabrics rather than solids as in the pattern. I really do prefer working with prints, especially prints that have a dominant colour, and I think they work perfectly in this quilt. It gives the blocks a bit more sparkle than with solids, I think.

This is a pretty time consuming quilt to piece - although the centre is the only really difficult part to put together. Having said that, the way I chose to quilt it made it a truly epic quilt to make. I haven't timed it at all, but I reckon I spent close to 150 hours quilting this one. And I am really proud of what I achieved with it. I tried really hard to be original in my quilting choices, and to add lots of texture without taking away from the piecing design too much. I think I've achieved my aims - I know this much detailed quilting isn't to everyone's taste, but I adore how it's finished up!

I used a wool/poly batting for the first time on this quilt - and I'm hooked. It gives the quilting a bit more puff than 100% wool batting, and it has a lovely drape despite all that quilting. I figure if I am going to spend all that time quilting, it might as well be noticeable ;o). 

Having looked through these photos, I've decided I will go back and add some more quilting to the log cabins that haven't been quilted in the coloured sections. In the photo below, you can see I've quilted a cross hatch pattern in the yellow log cabin - I'm going to go back and add bits of quilting like that at some stage soon.

 The back of this quilt is simply pieced, with a Cotton and Steel voile down the centre and a dark pink solid on either side. The voile held up amazingly well with all the quilting on this quilt - and having such a light weight fabric on the back means it drapes amazingly well. Not only that, it feels delightful!

As always, I matched my bobbin thread to the top thread, so the quilting on the solid pink is really visible, especially where I've quilted over the same place a few times. I somehow managed to keep the back straight relative to the front too - not something that always happens when I piece backs! The binding is partly pieced using the left overs from the top, and partly neutral fabric that blends in with the final border.

All the quilting was done with Aurifil threads - Dove grey 50wt for all the background and grey areas, and the four colours you can see below for the coloured sections. I love that you can see the quilting on some of the coloured sections, but blends into others. Changing thread colours wasn't something I originally planned for this quilt, but I'm glad I did. Although it means a lot of threads to bury, I think with this much quilting it needs to blend fairly well, or it would completely dominate the piecing.

This quilt was on my Finish Along Quarter One list, so I'm especially pleased to get one finish in this quarter. I've had so many lovely comments during the making of this quilt, thank you so much for your encouragement! I'm incredibly happy with how it's turned out, although I'm looking forward to making a couple of simple quilts before launching into my next epic quilt ;o)

xx Jess

Molecular (a finished quilt)

Somehow it's been nearly two months since I blogged?!? Admittedly I haven't been sewing at my normal frenetic levels (work, life, kids etc), but I do have a few recent finishes I'd like to share. As many of you would be aware, entries were due last Monday for the QuiltCon 2016 show. The week leading up to the deadline saw me finishing my Michael Miller fabric challenge entry and starting and finishing my EZ Quilting Triangle challenge - nothing like a deadline to kick me into gear ;o)

So this is my Michael Miller Glitz fabric challenge quilt. I really, really struggled to come up with an idea of what do to with these fabrics (bling on fabric is not my usual thing. At all.) I knew I wanted to include circles and to make it entirely black and white but beyond that I didn't have a clue. Eventually I came up with the idea of creating a stylised molecule against a simple strip pieced background.

I have no idea if this is a modern quilt or not - but I had a LOT of fun making it. The design itself is quite simple, but I gave myself a ton of room to play with the quilting. In a way this quilt is a statement about the lack of complex FMQ I saw in the quilt show at QuiltCon this year. As much as I love the look of dense straight lines, I think modern quilting can be more than that - and I firmly believe that FMQ can be decidedly modern. So I've attempted that on this quilt.

I even tried a bit of trapunto on this quilt - the circles have an extra layer of batting behind them, and have been needle turn appliqued onto the quilt top. You can see in the photo below, they are quite puffy, and make it just a little bit three dimensional. I decided to use blending thread for all the quilting - Aurifil 50wt in black and soft white - and I'm glad I did. Although there is a LOT of quilting on this quilt, because it blends I think it complements the quilt rather than dominating it, and gives it interest.

It is really difficult to capture in photographs, but the designs in the white are all continued through on the black sections. I used two layers of wool batting, so the texture is pretty awesome - plus these fabrics have a gorgeous feel. Very much like sewing with Cotton Couture.

It's so nice to be back to blogging - I'm hoping to share some of my other recent work over the next week or two. I promise it won't be another two months between posts ;o)

xx Jess

Welded Quilt {AGF Stitched}

Over the last couple of weeks I've been working pretty solidly on a new quilt. This is the third installment in the AGF Stitched series, a joint project between The Fat Quarter Shop and Art Gallery Fabrics. This quilt is called Welded, and it is another really fast quilt to put together :o)

As soon as I saw this quilt design, I decided it would be perfect for my eldest son's upcoming eleventh birthday. It's a great masculine design, and it uses large pieces of fabric so there's lots of opportunity to use large scale prints.

I've used fabric from several Art Gallery collections - the background text fabric is one of my all-time favorites (from Cherie designed by Frances Newcombe). The rest of the fabrics are from Utopia (Frances Newcombe), Curiosities (Jeni Baker), Happy Home (Caroline Hulse) and Imprint (Katarina Roccella). I love this mix of prints and colours - and I think my son will love it too :o)

I had originally intended to keep the quilting simple on this quilt (famous last words, right?) - but as you can see that idea went out of the window pretty quickly! I haven't actually finished the quilting yet, but you probably get the idea of where it's going from these photos...

 I started by quilting the background areas using Aurifil 50wt dove grey thread (the magic blending thread!), creating a square 'border' around each of the navy blue squares. It took me a while to decide what to do in the other coloured squares (orange, yellow and green etc), but I eventually decided to quilt a star type design, with pebbles radiating out from the centre of the blocks. I LOVE the texture in these parts of the quilt - although it was that decision that took this from quick and simple quilting, to something that is taking hours. All worth it though, I think!

I'm now in the process of going back and quilting each of the navy blocks, just using simple straight lines in varying widths. I will also quilt the turquoise corner stones at some stage soon. I was a bit worried that all this quilting would detract from the quilt design - but I think because I've used blending thread and kept it to just a few designs (essentially straight lines and pebbles) it works quite well. This is still a really soft and drapey quilt, despite all the quilting - possibly due to the amazing quality of Art Gallery Fabric I think?

If you'd like to make your own Welded quilt, you can find the free pattern here, and there is a video tutorial available too! The Fat Quarter Shop also have a complete quilt kit available, using Pat Bravo's Etno collection.

I hope you have a fantastic weekend! School holidays kick off today for two weeks, so I don't expect to get much sewing done - but I'm really looking forward to having my small people at home :o)

xx Jess

The adventure continues

The last week has been a wee bit manic in terms of sewing. I've been working on four different quilts (two new quilts, my Aviatrix and a very long term WIP) as well as starting to prep for the Farmer's Wife Sew Along. I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again - I love working like this, and flitting between different projects!

I haven't done all that much more quilting on my Aviatrix this week, but I'm so excited about how it's coming together you're going to have to look at it again ;o) I've finally finished quilting the x plus blocks - and I just love that border. It took a long time to do (I think about 15 hours give or take), but the effect of those geese was totally worth it. I'm so glad I decided to alternate the direction - I think it adds a bit of subtle movement.

I didn't quilt the second solid border (the one just before the x plus blocks) until today. I asked what people thought would work on Instagram yesterday, and some amazing ideas thrown at me. Krista (who I was lucky enough to do a class with at Quiltcon, and who inspired the quilted geese) suggested an orange peel quilting design in the border as a nod to traditional medallion quilting. When Krista suggests something, you kind of can't say no (and I think it is a genius idea) - but the thought of doing orange peels in a 1" border didn't excite me all that much - plus I think I'd have to mark to pull it off, and I'm not a marker if I have the choice! Since the border beyond the x plus blocks had me stumped, though, I thought orange peels would be perfect there. The overwhelming response (and my instinctive choice) to that first border was pebbles again. So that's what I did :o)

 Because the neutral border is pieced squares, I used those as the grid for the orange peels, and didn't have to mark. I call that a huge win :o) I'm in the process of going back and quilting straight lines between the orange peels and the x plus block - and may continue this on the other side of the orange peels, I haven't quite decided.

The long term WIP I've been working on is my Colour Block quilt made with Tula Pink's Birds and the Bees fabric, using Tula's free pattern she released when SaltWater came out. I pieced this quilt top about 2 1/2 years ago and I'm currently hand stitching the binding down, so I'm pretty excited that I'll be using it soon!

This is the biggest quilt I have ever made (about 85" x 96") and one of my favorites. The texture of the organic free motion quilted straight lines is just gorgeous - I'm looking forward to washing it (something I don't normally do straight away) and see what it feels like. I'm hoping it'll be done later this week so once I manage to get photos I'll do a proper post.

I hope you're all having a great week! I'm off to keep hand stitching binding...

xx Jess

Epic adventures in FMQ

A few weeks ago, I started quilting my Aviatrix Medallion and then everything came to a stand still when I got sick. I started feeling much better this week though, and I've gotten back into quilting with a vengeance - and I have progress to share!! It's nice to have energy again - this quilt weighs a tonne with all the seams and due to the sheer size of it (80" square), so the last thing I felt like doing last week was wrestling with this ;o)

I actually started quilting this a few weeks ago - I started out by ditch stitching around all the tiny diamonds in the centre block, and then matchstick quilted some of the white diamonds to make the birds pop. It's impossible to capture the texture in photographs, but this block feels amazing when you run your fingers across it. I didn't want to complicate the centre too much, so I free motion quilted straight lines radiating out, using the seams as a guide.

The half square triangle border is pretty simply quilted too - ditch stitched, and then straight lines through the lighter value HSTs. Up to this point, I thought I'd use Aurifil 50wt in Dove grey (my go-to quilting colour most of the time) for the whole thing. It blends beautifully into the soft grey Cotton and Steel crosses and contrasts just slightly with the white background.

Once I'd ditch stitched the next border however, I decided I wanted to start using coloured thread on the coloured sections. I'm being pretty careful about ditch stitching to keep this quilt square as I move out through the borders, not an easy feat on a quilt this size. Totally worth it though, as I'm removing most of the basting pins during the ditch stitching, which is freeing me up to go a little nuts with the more complex quilting. The other handy thing about having ditch stitched around each block is that I can quilt each of the colours (ie blue then pink then red etc) and only change threads between each colour, rather than between each block.

Once I'd finished quilting the strip border, I sat down and did a bit of sketching to figure out how to quilt the x plus blocks. One of my favorite parts of the border above are the quilted geese in the lowest border, so I decided to continue that theme by quilting geese into the 'x' parts of these blocks. I quilted out all of the 'background' first using dove grey thread, creating gems between the blocks. And now I'm going back to each block and quilting them with a coordinating colour. I've matched my thread colour to the middle value in each colour group - so it blends quite well into some of the colours, but contrasts with the lightest and darkest fabrics. A little bit scary (and requires a LOT of concentration), but totally worth it. I'm delighted with how this border is progressing. I'm not doing any marking for this either - I did for the first block and then realised I could do it by eye reasonably easily :o) 

I'm not going to lie - this quilting is taking a looong time (around 30 minutes for each block), but I put so much time and effort into the piecing, I figure it's worth time and effort with the quilting. Quite a few people have commented about how much patience I must have - I guess I do, but I enjoy this kind of quilting so much and the result is absolutely worth it, I think! I will go back and quilt the skinny border before the x plus blocks too - I just haven't decided what to do yet.

I did want to clear up a few things in this post too - I've had a few no-reply commenters recently who assume I quilt on a long arm. I don't. All of this is done on my domestic Bernina. Yes it is hard on the shoulders, but I stretch a lot and take regular breaks. I'm a firm believer that it is possible to do pretty much anything on a domestic that you can on a long arm (except perhaps really large scale quilting where you just can't manipulate the quilt effectively or see where you need to go next). I'd still love a long arm one day, but I'm content with what I've got and I'm happy to work within the limits of a domestic machine.

Apologies for the epic and slightly preachy post, I hope you're all having a fabulous week!

xx Jess

PS Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday!!