8/6/14

Thread Therapy

I have been living in an apartment waiting for a home to be built. This has taken far longer than expected. I am so glad I brought Bernina with me!

She and I have been making a small wall quilt, and as usual, I've learned a few things. Once the top was pieced (all 1" squares), I wanted to try quilting with Jacquie Gering's methods. I had taken her class "Creative Quilting With Your Walking Foot" at Craftsy (www.craftsy.com) and enjoyed it very much. So love her work.

I decided it might be fun to quilt spiraled circles over all the straight lines of my quilt. This is where the thread therapy came in. I absolutely LOVE doing this kind of quilting! It's so relaxing. This is one continuous spiral, so no stopping and starting...

 
I started off-center and finished one spiral (kept stitching until the circles ran off the edges of the quilt) and decided to add another spiral and see what happened when they overlapped. I liked the result, but was a little disappointed that the quilting overtook the piecing. I had wanted to emphasize the upward graphic of the connecting squares, but to me the quilting steals the show. It's OK. I still love it.
 
"Onward and Upward" 19" x 21"
 
One more lesson from this one: I had never made a quilt without traditional binding and decided to try facing the edges. Love the way that turned out and will be doing it again in the future. Bernina and I and her older sister the 930 will be stitching even more happily when we get into our sewing space in the new house. And this little quilt will be one of the first things I hang.