The clue was in the fabric…

Hi everyone,

my productive quilty weekend didn’t end with just that pink and green Flying Geese. I was literally on a roll and just needed to quilt some more…
Out comes another UFO that was standing by, ready to be quilted!

And with it – another story to be told!
What is this,  you may ask? It is one of the samples I did while working from a wonderful book I found on Amazon few years back: Anna Faustino’s “Simply Stunning Woven Quilts” is a great one! It is a new, actually easy, technique of – yes, actually weaving to make great looking creations!

You can find out more about Anna on her web site and about the book here (Amazon of course… ). As soon as I saw just the front of this book, I knew I had to try this – it looked so intriguing, beautiful,
something new and yes – it used some of my favorite fabrics, color-gradation ones (or “ombre” fabrics as they are called too). Yeah – that “one click” shopping can be dangerous for me… 🙂
However, this book was a great find – I love this technique, my students loved the class I teach occasionally in my local quilt shop and I am going to be playing with this over and over again.
OK – back to the UFO!
How did this one come to be? Well, the introductory project in the book uses two fat quarters of two different fabric to be woven and then there is applique on top of that. After doing several of these, and by looking at my vast collection of ombre fabric I thought I will try a WHOLE half yard of this blue ombre and one of the bold Kaffe Fassett’s floral prints and no applique this time and make it into a table runner (or a tall wall hanging?). I figured that parts of floral designs will come through and make it interesting – do you think it worked?
Now… how to quilt this one was a bit puzzling to me… Yes, you can just go down the wavy lines, but that is not as much fun…he, he. Also – this technique requires both fabrics to be lined with fusible interfacing, so we are talking LAYERS here – two layers of fabric WITH fusible, batting and backing! Yeah… This is the real test – for thread, for needles, for machine – agree?
For machine, I knew my trusty Pfaff will be OK, my recent discovery of Superior’s Titanium coated Topstitch needles (size 90) was a great improvement for needles (love these!) and for thread – well my friends, here is your real test – Aurifil 50wt cotton thread worked like a charm, even in this situation!
Not to mention (again!) these brilliant colors…

Use one, or two, or all? Of course I will play with ALL of them! 🙂
However…there was still that question on HOW to quilt it! I sat on the floor looking and looking at this thing, stumped. And then – DUH!!
The clue is in the fabric:

 See how the center of the flower peeks through here?

 

 Or here?

Or how you can see almost the whole flower above just “interrupted” with some of the blue fabric?
I knew what I wanted to do!! Follow the lines of the flower starting in those visible ones (center and veins radiating from it) and extend the flower drawing from there! YAY!
OK, does this make sense to you? 🙂
Here is what I mean:

 Or multiple flowers:

Played with these in that deep plum colored thread and kept that one in the bobbin too:

On to try some other color, that beautiful light teal…

I had so much fun playing with this! I didn’t try to follow those lines in the print exactly, just as a guide and inspiration to play. Do you do this, do you sometimes follow the lines of the print for quilting?
Here is how is all turned out:

Lots of flowers quilted, but I didn’t want them to be all over. I left some space in the middle and tried just some wavy lines along the edges of fabric:

Not sure if I am done yet… Maybe some more of those lines? What do you think?
It was really hard to take a good overall photo inside and it was raining and wind was blowing, so I might go back to try some more photos today.
In the meantime – let me know what you think? How do you choose your quilting patterns and designs? What is your inspiration?

Have a wonderful weekend ahead,
Marija