Rays of Sunshine

As I sit here awaiting our 4th dumping of snow in 2 weeks, I felt like we just needed a little burst of spring brightness.  This is Debbie's quilt, and it is made from fantastic modern Kaffe Fassett fabrics.  They are bold and bright and very whimsical.  Her overly simplistic piecing perfectly showcases the large-scale prints so that they can be seen and enjoyed.

This quilt has a wool batting because I feared that the quilting might not show very much through the print. The wool does a great job of providing relief for the quilting.  I chose two threads - a hot pink 40wt poly by Wonderfil.  It is not as shiny as the Glide thread, but was the right color for the quilt.  I felt that too much shine would just compete with the patterns.  The other thread is also by Wonderfil, and is an ivory.

 This is a quilt that did not need overly serious quilting.  These larger squares (~9-10") needed to be subdivided somewhat to create visual interest, but overly complicated quilting would be lost.  I chose to make diamond on-point frames, and they were triple outlined to make them show up more.  Just framing them with one line of stitching is inadequate on these prints.  Three lines, though, does show.  Inside the square, I did a floral/dahlia kind of stitching, and outside the square in the triangles is a swirling  stitch.

 All of the many diamonds (and there are a lot!) were double cc'd.  This gives a great definition to the shape.  I saved the white areas for a more detailed stitching, as it would show more on the lighter print.  Rather than using a traditional-style feather though, which is completely out of place on this style quilt, I chose a more edgy type pseudo-feather.  It creates nice movement and dimension, without a hint of traditionalism.

The wider/outer frames on the 16 blocks were done with a more whimsical approach.  The wave is freehanded, as are the diamonds at the corners.  It is intended to look free and spirited.  Then I densely stitched lines outside of the wavy line to make the border pop.

I added the binding this morning, and as soon as we are free and clear of snow, I will get this mailed off to warmer and probably sunnier California :-)