I wanted to say a big thanks to all the comments, input and suggestions on my post "Quilting Thoughts"! You have no idea how much they help me in making a decision and also giving me great ideas that maybe I hadn't thought of before....so after reading over the comments I came up with this idea.
After I complete a quilt, I'm going to do a "Quilting Wrap-Up" post on that quilt. Along with pictures of the finished quilt, I will also share any quilting tips, thoughts, ideas....that I may have done on that quilt. Over a long stretch of time I hope to cover many aspects of the quilting process, including any tips for the quilter sending their quilts out to longarm quilters as to what kind of things make it easier for us when quilting on customers quilts.
Today I wanted to share with you my "Urban Nine Patch" quilt and the tools I used to quilt this up along with my quilting design idea.
I've personally never seen a quilt done up in these colors. Tangerine orange, cactus green and black and white. I really wanted to capture a contemporary look using these colors for a quilt and really love how it turned out!
When it came to how I was going to quilt it up, I knew I wanted to keep with a contemporary look and keeping the quilting more on the modern side would help with that....so of course some straight lines and circles were an easy choice.
With the straight lines I wanted to showcase the secondary design in this quilt, because of the fabrics and placement of the fabrics I sort of lost that secondary design. I think the straight lines helped showcase it. I love circles, I think you can put a circle on just about any quilt and it gives character and gives your eye something to look at. In this quilt, by putting a circle swirl in the centers helped your eye focus also on that secondary design.
Now for the actual Nine Patch's. I really wanted them to pop, so I accentuated the curve by first stitching in the ditch and then adding two echo curves next to the outside curve 1/4" apart. By doing that it really gave the Nine Patch the "punch" it needed to stand out. Again I added a circle in the center for character and a fun filler for the remaining area's. For the center square....just a stitch in the ditch and one echo to accentuate the square is all it needed.
The backing fabric, I picked up at JoAnn's...Awesome and I always piece my two fabric pieces or more together with a coordination print or color that matches the front of the quilt.
This 7" x 2" ruler by "The Gadget Girls" is my absolute favorite ruler! I use it ALL THE TIME!! It has marking lines so you can use them as a guide when doing parallel straight lines. That's how I did the straight lines for this quilt. I also use this ruler for stitching in the ditch on most all quilts. Another little tip I've found for quilting straight lines is the faster I go, the smoother and easier it is.
When doing my circle swirl, I first used this 2 1/4" circle to stitch the circle and then I started in the center of the circle and did a freehand swirl out to the stitched circle. I have a set of these blue acrylic circles in different sizes and love them. They have markings so you can center the circle on the fabric, as you can see I've centered the marks on my pieced fabric. I found these at "Linda's Electric Quilters".
I used the same circle for the centers of the Nine Patch. It just so happen to be the perfect size. These were fun, I stitched around the circle and started with my filler for the outside in one corner, ending in the same corner, then stitched in the ditch around the center square.
Now for the curved acrylic template I used. If you look close you can see it. It's clear. I used this for stitching in the ditch around the Nine Patch block and also for the two echo lines. I have a set of these curved acrylic rulers and use them a lot. I used the 15" one for most of my curves in my quilts. They are called "Renae's Amazing Rays".
I like the binding I chose. I didn't want to go to bold in fear of taking away from the quilt....and the lighting was beautiful outside this morning. This is my favorite picture of the quilt!
~Jenny~
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