Machine Quilting: Crane Kimono

Sharon sent me this quilt which was really interesting to me. It was a panel that I quilted before, but in a completely new way that I never would have thought of!

 It's a little hard to see here because of the angle (again still getting used to taking photos in the new quilting space - the old room was square and the new one is thin and long) but the crane panel is in the middle of a pieced kimono with some more borders added around it.

 Sharon wanted the sky to be as "lifelike" as possible with clouds. There was a little back and forth trying to figure out what kind of clouds she was looking for because my first instinct was to do stylized clouds that are common in Oriental quilts. I can only quilt with the thread like a line drawing so I had to think a bit on this one how to get the look she was going for within my abilities.

 Aside from the clouds, the rest of the panel was filled with quilting to follow along the design, you actually can't see most of it and that was the plan. The other areas were filled with a variety of fillers, some based on the fabrics and some not so much.

 The moon was fun to do, I added in some straight lines and bubbles to mimic craters and shadows. It's a little artsy, but it fit within the rest of the quilt.

The other fillers were fun and defined the areas as needed, but all worked well together too. That's sometimes the hardest part of designing custom quilting - trying to make everything work on it's own yet together and not have any one part look like an afterthought.

Thanks, Sharon, for sending me this quilt to work on! It's still hard to imagine that the same panel can have completely different looking results once it's all finished!