Long Arm Quilting #17 Louise – Finished Quilt

It was Quilts of Valor week at the studio, so first I’ll talk about Louise’s quilt. Her quilt is 64″ square with a great blue backing that has white stars on it.

I knew I was going to do a star pattern for Louise’s quilt, and I knew I would do the quilting in either red or blue thread.  The only question really was whether I would use a pantograph or my groovy boards, and whether I would use So Fine or New Brytes for the thread.

I loaded up Louise’s quilt on the frame:

and it’s just a really great pattern, don’t you think?  I loved the colors and the blocks.  It also gave me an opportunity to use the new side clamps that I got from Renae Haddadin:

For the quilting, I chose Superior New Brytes #1128 Song Sung Blue. New Brytes is exactly the same thread as So Fine, except that it is twice as thick at 30/3 weight.  I just love the beautiful sheen on this thread:

It’s my first time quilting with this thread, although I’ve auditioned it on several occasions for other projects.  Because this thread is so thick, it’s great for thread painting and other projects where you want the stitches to show up, but not so great if you have a lot of backtracking to do because of the thread buildup.  It was great for the pantograph design that I chose, which incorporated loops & stars.  It’s a design by Sue Schmeiden.

As I was quilting this, I decided that choosing to do pantographs on these quilts is actually a great way to build a portfolio of the designs that I have to show how they look on a finished project.  I know I’ve been doing a lot of pantographs lately, but they do come in handy when you are working under a deadline, and it is nice to be able to finish something more quickly.

One thing that I need to develop in my own free motion quilting is the ability to create more open, larger designs.  I tend to quilt really densely when I free motion which uses a lot more thread.  I finished one the other day that took six bobbins, and another similar sized one where I used a pantograph and needed only one bobbin.  I guess the good news is that I’ll make use of all this thread I bought!

Anyway, back to Louise’s quilt!  The pattern has a 15″ repeat, so I had to advance the quilt about 4 times before I was done.  Boy do I love having such a large space to quilt in!  The quilting stitches blend pretty well into the backing, giving it a nice texture:

Here’s the front of Louise’s quilt finished:

And here is the back:

To endless possibilities,