Otto has one of the Bernina quilting frames now in the shop and we have been busy learning how to best use the software and put the results onto a quilt. The quilt I am posting today is one that I used for a teaching sample back in the very early 1990s in fact, it might have begun before that as I can remember purchasing fabrics from a store that has since closed when we were living in a little country town called Saddleworth. We moved there in mid 1987, I began my first quilt - a Baltimore album queen size hand appliqued and quilted piece - and we moved from there to Cowell early 1990. By that time, I had been merrily stitching and I was asked to have an exhibition of my quilts. I filled the institute building - for those who don't know this is a community building and generally there is one in most country towns and they are huge!
Anyway in order to practice using the quilting frame I decided that it was time some of these old quilt tops were quilted. This one is an old favourite and still popular no matter the colours used or the setting used. I used a quilting design that came with the software and "scooted" the second row to intertwine with the first row of stitching. With the second row, I actually decided that it would be quicker to take the original design into the PatternCad where I changed into a pattern that began at the halfway point of the original design. Much easier and quicker to use once that was done. PatternCad is really quite easy to use.
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| This was one of my early scrap quilts and even then I believed in using lots of different fabrics, quite a challenge then as we did not have too many quilt shops. I can remember phoning USA (Keepsake Quilting and Hancocks) to add to my stash. |
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| The quilt didn't take too long to quilt but a lot longer than I anticipated as I had moved the designs closer together so that there was little blank areas |
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| A close up of the centre |
One thing that took a bit of juggling - with this top I had purchased a Jinny Beyer strip to use for the background. Enough for me to machine quilt. However, the quilting frame needs a lot more so I had to piece the backing including fussy cutting. Now that it is quilted, one would never know! I must remember to take a photo of the back to show.
I just need to doctor the next lot of photos for another top - another teaching sample - and I will post that tomorrow. This one was custom quilted but more tomorrow.
Chris
