flowering snowball reveal!

 dappled adjective having spots of a different shade, tone or colour

 from the background.

 Nine months ago I conceived an idea for a quilt and today I gave birth!

The pattern is a simplified version of a flowering snowball pattern,

that I had admired on Marys blog.

I had just finished the summer of love quilt

so I was after an escape from all that colour!

The latter part of 2011 was a very grey year for me

 grey walls, grey skies and grey fabric.

I was inspired not by an object but of several blogs and a way of living,

one that I would love to live, but I just love colour too much to be that pure.

sea cottage  and  dreamy whites

will give you the ethereal idea.

This quilt really should be called the learning curve,

as it's a first for me to sew curves, applique a quilt to the backing

 and also a first attempt at free motion quilting.

So you will have to forgive my overly whimsical, highly poetic choice of 

dappled days as a name, 

I can only say that I was channelling my inner Geoffrey Munn

(the romantically imaginative jewellery expert on the antiques roadshow)

 

Now for the juicy bits!

the pattern: flowering snowball

the fabric: sweetwater

sewing method: english paper pieced

backing: recycled bedding

quilting: free motion

size: approx 50" x 65"

wadding: heirloom premium cotton

time taken: 9 months

mistakes made: knowing that the backing was really too small but using it anyway,

which came back to bite me when sewing on the binding!

lesson learnt!

snuggle factor: very

ps.

If you would like to look back on the dappled days progress

check out here and here

fluff and the machine

 There's nothing like a free motion quilting marathon to help you get to know your machine.

 As you know I am a fmq virgin.

What better way to practice than to quilt a quilt,
practicing on a small piece is fine,
I did find however that I really only got to grips with it after an hour or so,
which is why a big project worked for me.

Enter stage left

the fluff

After 10 minutes and a clunk my machine came to a halt.

After a mild panic I remembered my Janome hand book.

Fingers crossed I followed the instructions and opened the foot plate.

Hand on heart I have never in my life done this before (my bad)

(remember to unplug before attempting this please)

But whoa do you see the fluff under the bobbin casing!!

This was after I had vacuumed too.

I'm pretty sure I could make a quilt if I gathered enough.

So I gave everything a good clean out and hey presto it only went and fixed the problem!

I must add that the first quarter of quilting is pretty awful.

I started off a bit haphazard and broke the thread more times than I care to remember

(I know now that was a tension problem and generally poor technique)

Day 2 which was yesterday I began to understand and find what worked for me.

I persevered through,

Latex gloves are a must for quilting,

 but are a pain in the butt when threading needles and switching on my machine,

I lost count how many times I snagged them,

even managing to get them wound up with thread when loading a bobbin!!

I worked in random lines 

and found that to do nice loops I could only go from left to right.

Towards the end of my 4 hour marathon I was really rocking the fmq

(like you see on you tube)

And then bam broken needle!!!

It was a new needle too.

Another first for me, I'm not sure how it happened but it did!

I love the wishy washy effect the fmq gives,

it's quite solid yet nice and cosy still.

I am still considering a bit of hand embellishment,

maybe in grey though instead of turquoise.

Funny how quilting can change a quilt so...

details

my machine janome qxl 605

number of fluff removal 2

grey fabrics by sweetwater

wadding heirloom cotton premium 

design flowering snowball

english paper pieced

name not sure

fluff?

I quilt

okay so I truly wasn't going to post today,

but here I am anyway!

I have basted my flowering snowball,

after a eureka moment of resourcing the backing from a thrifted sheet

(from my stash!!)

I began this quilt as a challenge to paper piece curves,

and to hand quilt...

This quilt is shouting St Ives, Cornwall and troika pottery to me.

I'm thinking of machine quilting and hand stitching.

Possibly machine one circle in the grey area

and hand quilting in turquoise the contours?

What would you do?