Machine Quilting: Christmas Tree Panel

Darlene was at it again (or still) and she's putting me to shame in the amount of projects she has been finishing. I swear, I just need a month of weekends to get everything done!

 Now, it is still cold here. It is after Christmas. I haven't seen grass in weeks or months (it's been so long I can't remember!). Not that I didn't want to do this quilt, but it did feel a bit like salt in an open wound kinda. No offense, but the last thing I want to see now is Christmas and snowflakes. I want bright and tropical, but I digress.

Anywho, Darlene combined this Christmas Tree panel from Northcott with some snowflake blocks using her Marti Michell templates. I think it worked out quite well.

 I used a couple different threads for this quilt, a blue to blend in certain areas and a grey for others.

 Darlene asked for more snowflakes to be quilted in the plain blocks in the borders...

 And I just quilted in and around the star blocks to enhance those a bit more.

This panel is designed to have lights in the bright white circles after quilting. I personally don't know how you'd feel cutting holes into your finished quilt to add lights, but after getting the lights in hand, Darlene opted to add crystals to those areas and others rather than the lights. Wise choice I think.

Darlene, great job once again and now I'm going to have to get sewing to catch up with all of your UFO finishes!

Machine Quilting: Juxtaposition Quilt

My friend Leslie is awesome. I'm just saying that first and foremost. She is such an overachiever with her quilts and I LOVE IT!!!

When my book came out, she was shocked and amazed (as many people were) that one of her favorite quilts in the book, Woodland Sunset, combined batiks and Civil War fabrics. Actually, at this point she had hardly dealt with batiks but was intrigued. After her first quilt she was hooked and never looked back. Little did I know, later on she would come up with this:

 Leslie mixed batiks and Civil War fabrics from her stash and used her Marti Michell (From Marti) Log Cabin Ruler to create these offset Log Cabin blocks. Hence the juxtaposition part. It's traditional, but not. It's modern, but not. It's circles... It's a conundrum! But I thought extra long and hard on this one and I LOVE the end results, so here's your fair warning - THERE'S TONS OF PICTURES!!!

 I started off with using Dream Puff batting to give the circles a trapunto-ish feeling and it worked wonderfully. Now, to make the circles stand out more, I quilted the background really dense with a modern geometric type design. This squishes the batting down and makes it not so puffy. Then the fun started - each block was quilted different!

 Each circle had it's own personality with the fabrics and colors chosen, so to keep it traditional-ish, I quilted a circle and feathered the outside of it. Then the center was open for each color. This one was a bit more traditional...

 And this one went totally modern. I LOVE IT!!!

 A little traditional...

 And a little modern...

 You get the idea... I'll just let you take a look at the rest...

 Alright, I thought this one would be super easy to see the quilting with the black fabrics (I was quilting in a medium brown), but with some of the patterns, you really can't see it. I have a better picture further on down to show the details in this one, promise.

 Tada! 12 blocks, each a bit different!

 This quilt was amazing and I had a blast working on it.

 Here's the detail in that one block you really couldn't see earlier.

 I love how the puff batting did it's job perfectly to make the feathers pop a bit more than the rest of the quilt. I love this batting for this result and plan on using it a bunch more in the future. But wait there's more! I said Leslie is an overachiever... Yeah, she pieced the back too using the same scraps from her stash but mixing them up a bit more:

 Isn't it amazing!!! It has so much personality and dang it, now I need to make one!

Here's how the quilting looks on the back of the quilt. I love how even the personality of each blocks comes through on the back!

Wasn't this quilt fun?! Now, it was a process and a half to do and many of the techniques I used on this quilt were new to me. Tomorrow I will be back with how exactly planned the quilt and completed the blocks. It was really neat and like most quilty things, not that bad once it was broken up into smaller chunks.

So how do you think I did? It's still a juxtaposition, and it's traditional, but it's not. It's modern, but it's not. It has circles, but now they have personality... If you couldn't tell, I LOVE THIS QUILT!!! And now I have to go play in my stash... :) Which circle is your favorite or do you love them all like me? Come back tomorrow for part 2!