Two Quilts at Two Stages

So today is What’s Leah Working on Wednesday and already I love this day for the chance to share all the projects I’m working on and the thought process going on with them.

I find, and maybe you do too, that some projects can easily get bogged down. I think it may be the reason why so many quilters have so many UFOs (Unfinished Objects).

It’s good to have an infusion of new opinions or just a simple nod that yes, the quilt looks good, or no, that color choice is WAY off!

So today I’m going to share two quilts that are both at two different stages of their creation.

The first is Shadow Self, which I’ve been chatting about a whole lot this month.

Here’s the completed photo of the front with the first set of quilting lines completed:

And here is the back with the batting being clipped away to reveal the quilting design:

Yes, the clipping is officially taking forever (I think it’s a week now since I started, which is a REALLY long time for me).

But this is the first time I’ve truly achieved my goal of nearly 50% trapuntoed motifs and 50% open area for fillers.

With every quilt before this, I’ve wanted to have this balance, but missed it because I waited until AFTER the quilt was pieced.

This is a big mistake because once a quilt is pieced, it’s very tricky to see through the piecing lines and imagine a quilting design.

It’s far easier to plan a quilting design when the quilt is still just black and white lines on a piece of paper.

I have around 2 more days of clipping on this quilt and then I’ll sandwich it up with more polyester batting and a black batik backing fabric and get ready to quilt it.

When I have one quilt ready for work on the machine, I really like to have another quilt in the studio being put together. This way if I’m not in the mood to quilt, I have something else to do, either hand work or cutting fabric, that doesn’t involve the machine.

My second project is my first Accu Quilt Quilt (say that three times fast!)

This quilt was entirely made from die cut feathers from the Feather Die and circles from the Flowers Die. It was surprisingly quick to put together because of the die cut shapes.

Each feather has been fused using Seam-a-Seam-2 Lite and the next step is to machine applique each feather down so they don’t fray after washing.

I’m not sure what to name this quilt yet. Josh said it looked like a Psychedelic Flower Garden, which sounds like a good name, but I’m leaning more towards Rainbow Flower Garden.

I like this quilt because it’s a very traditional format (blocks arranged with sashing and borders), but it still manages to be a little funky.

This will be the first quilt I showcase using the Accu Quilt in videos starting in June. We’ll also quilt the quilt together so you can see what role fillers can play in actual blocks, sashing, or borders.

So that’s it for this Wednesday! Now that Rainbow Flower Garden is off my big tables now I can pull out even more fabric and start cutting out a few new skirts or shirts to make for NCQS. It’s always nice to be able to make something new to wear!

Let’s go Quilt!

Leah Day