I'm so in love with this quilt. Like: Seriously! And adding to the happiness is the crossing-off of a UFO from 2013 and the fulfillment of my February Lovely-Year-of-Finishes goal.
The dimensionality on this is marvelous with all the 3D parts, the fabric feels so nice, the 80/20 cotton/poly batt has a perfect drape inside that fairly-dense quilting . . . Who cares that Christmas has been put away for quite some time? ;D
I don't have a full-on shot, yet, of the finished quilt. I'll get that in a couple of days and insert it here. We're supposed to get 18" of snow starting tomorrow, so I'm waiting for that blanket of beauty to form before going outside for a photo op. Too bad I'm not ambitious enough to pull the reindeer back out and set them up, too - that'd be pretty, but this flimsy shot is going to have to be enough for that idea:
This quilt is from the free pattern, "Jovial," put out by Moda in 2011. I bought the kit made from the Basic Grey fabric collection, Jovial. I didn't get enough of the blue-based reindeer yardage for the backing, so it's framed with some coordinating Grunge yardage of red. LOVE THE EFFECT! Just perfect for the quilt. It measures 75 x 75" after the quilting, which pulled up two inches from its 77 x 77 measurement as a flimsy. (So don't forget about that effect if you're ever making a quilt for a very specific dimension.)
All the quilting was done on my Viking Sapphire, in a combination of walking foot and free motion work with the spring-action foot. When I started doing the quilting on this, you may remember that I decided to do something about the free-flying 3D trees, as the pocket in this shot catching a spool I'd dropped made it clear to me that this intended sofa-snuggler would get repeatedly ripped by feet catching those pockets!
I'm super happy with the cathedral-window type approach I used. I stitched those flaps down as I did the quilting, with curved pop-out edges. I used a fine-gauged blanket stitch for that, and switched to straight stitches on each tree to finish its outline at the base and trunk.
Everything else was done with free-motion work. On the border, I just ran parallel squiggle lines outward by following the edges of the bubbles in the print. You can see here that I just used the border print for the binding. It disappears on the front (and truthfully, this design doesn't need further framing), but it's a very nice edging on the back.
In the center, I wanted to make meandering "wind" that was blowing around everything. I guess it's a McTavishing adaptation of sorts, and I think it was quite successful!
As I came to each spinner, I ran a straight line close to the heavy edge to give a nice definition as well as to stabilize the bulky seams underneath. Worked like a charm. They all lay down properly now, and the flaps look perky without rebelling against their placement.
My wind-work execution is not particularly refined, like I dream of it being, but there are no tension problems nor messy nests.
And on a quilt that's fun in a whimsical, almost-folksy way, the amateur form is right at home. It won't be long before I get the feel of the McTavishing family of fills in my hands for very smooth, evenly-paced and attractively arranged results. :)
I really love the effect of the unquilted trees on the back:
Navarre thinks I made this quilt for him. It was so difficult to catch some shots today, as he kept doing the kitty-ski maneuver under, into, and through it!
The amazing thing is that the camera was actually able to capture him in focus one time:
I'm going to keep this quilt out for another week and enjoy it through the snow-in before I put it away until next year. It's highly unusual for me to work on a Christmas quilt outside of the late-Nov thru New Year's range, but I'd really wanted this one finished this winter, and when you have a tussle with cancer, you just get to do whatever you want with your quilts. ;D
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