Every quilt that comes to my frame is really a work of love.  That is why I love my job as a long arm quilter!  This little quilt was finished this week, and is for a new grand baby coming this year for one of my clients

I want to share a bit of the design process and how I quilted this quilt as it has some “3-D” elements and a rick rack flange, which may be a be intimidating if you haven’t quilted a top like this before.

I knew this would be a simple custom, combining computerized, free motion and scalloped ruler work.  The customer had sent me a picture of some ideas she wanted in the quilt and that helped to shape the quilting.

The outside border was simple circles completed with my computerized system, Quilt Path on my APQS Millie.  I repeated this pattern on the inner border, moving the rick rack flange out of the way, either by holding it away from the stitching path or pinning it out of the way

The large block borders I completed with a simple “X” quilted across the border,  to provide contrast between the circle borders.  I wanted the borders to be simple, to draw the eye to the owl  in the centre of the quilt with it’s cute effects.   (If you have Quilt Path, I used the block outline in Settings to place my lines and then sat back and watched it stitch.  Can’t insert enough hearts here for my love of Quilt Path.)

Once I completed the borders, I stitched around the owl to stabilize it and then started on the background and the rest of the owl.  It involved changing thread colours a couple of times

The tricky part of any loose pieces on a  quilt top is to manage them before the hopping foot reaches them and either stitches over them or the hopping foot gets caught in them and could cause a number of problems.  Having a plan ahead of time will reduce problems under the hopping foot.

 

Getting ready to stitch off the border with the scallop ruler.

 

 

 

 

 

Below you can see the scallop stitched, the leaf flipped over, pinned and starting to stitch along the ruler edge again.  I just kept repeating this process until everything was stitched.  I did stitch a straight line down the centre of the leaves to anchor the leaves to all three layers for strength.

 

 

Let me know if you have any question or any topic you have a question on, I just might have a solution!  (or at least the way Joanne does it . . . )  I do have a class on Custom Quilting happening at SPOOLS: The Workshop in a couple of weeks.  Take a look on my events page if you are interested!

Thanks for looking-go create some beauty and spread in this world!