Beneath the Waves (a finished quilt!)

Back in December last year, I hosted a giveaway for a roll up of blue Cotton Couture fabric from my wonderful sponsors Polka Dot Tea fabrics and Danielle and Jeanette generously sent me a roll up as well. It's no secret that I'm a massive fan of cotton couture - I first used it last year when I made Galaxy and it was love at first touch. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to work with the roll up! Around the same time, I bought Karlee Porter's self published Grafitti Quilting book (which is excellent), and instantly wanted to give grafitti quilting a try - and what better way to feature quilting than working on an all-solids quilt? This idea percolated away for a while, and then when I came back from QuiltCon I came up with a solid plan for how I wanted to approach it.

I started by sorting the strips by value (using the black and white function on my camera), attempting to have a smooth transition from dark to light across the quilt top. I nearly managed it, but I think I accidentally switched a few strips around while I was piecing it so there are a couple that don't quite transition smoothly - but it's close enough for the effect I wanted ;o)

Once it was pieced and basted I dived straight into the quilting. I was lucky enough to attend a class with Krista Withers (one of my quilty heroes) at QuiltCon, and I came home full of ideas I wanted to try. One of the best things I came away from Krista's class with was ideas for how to approach breaking up negative space with quilting, and I wanted to incorporate some of that into the quilting on this quilt. So I decided to use a combination of grafitti quilting and Krista's ideas and hope for the best. I decided to use this as a learning experience, and just go with it - no ripping stitches, no self-criticism but just have fun and play. As a result it was one of the most enjoyable quilts to quilt - and I'm delighted with how it turned out. It was a brilliant learning quilt - finding some new (to me) shapes and combinations of designs, and getting LOTS of ideas for future quilts.

I made this quilt for my baby nephew, who lives in a house with polished boards, so I used a double layer of wool batting on this quilt thinking it would be a lovely quilt for wriggle time (and to play on as he gets older). The resulting texture is pretty incredible - I think it will be a really great sensory quilt as he gets older and starts to explore things more. I'm using a double layer of batting more and more on smaller quilts - I just can't get enough of the texture it gives. I don't think I'd do it on anything much bigger than this (it's about 40" x 60") due to the added weight, but as I'm becoming more confident with my quilting, I'm really loving the added puff two layers gives.

The quilting is all Aurifil 50wt thread - a variegated blue in the darker area of the quilt, and then a light variegated grey in the lighter area. Overall the thread has blended beautifully and has just left all the glorious texture. The combination of cotton couture, double layer batting and all that quilting makes for a pretty luxurious quilt - it's silky soft to touch and it is very comfy to lie on (as this little cutie can attest!)

I can't promise I'll have two posts in such quick succession again by the way - but these wintery nights are much better suited to sitting on the couch with my laptop than braving my freezing cold sewing room, and I have lots of things I need to share, so I might actually become a regular blogger again ;o)

xx Jess