Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Recent efforts

Since my Muse still appears to be out of the country, I have been following the advice of others and working on "something" even if it isn't original or even "arty".  I have been trying to find a way of producing plump, well-rounded feathers.  In the recent past, I have done some machine Trapunto, and not been really satisfied with the result, although the technique works fairly well.  I spend  a lot of time checking out quilt related blogs on the internet and in one, found the suggestion that working with two layers of Hobbs 80/20 batting can produce a nicely rounded feather.  This is what I have done here.  This top was pieced, including the mitred corners, of which I am quite proud.  I haven't attempted a mitred corner in at least 10 years


The only problem with using two layers of batting is that it results in a fairly heavy quilt.  This quilt is only about 42" square.  If it was larger, it might prove too heavy for actual use--not that I ever expect this to be used!
In my "arty" pieces, I usually add a false back to hide the intense quilting and hand stitching.  I have experienced some tension problems with my Horizon 7700, in the past, and while I can control this, to a certain extent,  the backs are not as good as I would like them to be.  In this quilt, the back is quite fine.  I backed the piece with a cotton sateen and quite like the effect.



The final binding will be in the green pin-dot, and I will post a picture when I finally get that done.

I am linking this with Nina Marie Sayre's blog  http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.ca