Lucy Boston

Here is my latest custom quilt to be finished for a client in NY. This is all English Paper Pieced. I have only quilted two other of this type of quilt, and one was my own (https://quiltsoflove.blogspot.com/2015/04/bouquet-royale-goes-to-showheres-look.html). You can look in my Design Inspirations book to see how my construction differs from the EPP method. I hand piece so that seams are not all wide open. It allows for any ditch stitching to be done if desired.

 The backside of this quilt was definitely well done, even if every seam lays open.

 Look how many stitches she has on each 1" section! There is actually a little raised ridge created with the stitches. I may have been able to do a little SID, but I didnt want to risk having it not work out well.

 The other issue I had with this quilt is that fabrics were not prewashed so marking of blocks with anything buy chalk would not happen. I went to work upon loading the quilt using my Cintique pen tablet and Photoshop designing a block design that could be quilted by using point to point quilting. This just means that I use the block construction rather than any marked lines or points.

Though this behemoth will become a bed quilt, the owner is also showing it this spring. We decided to double batt the quilt with 80/20 and wool to help show the quilting on all of the prints.

The hardest decision was determining what to use for thread. The feathers in the ivory background are a subtle taupe YLI Polished Poly thread. It's not quite ivory, but not tan either. The thread is called Mountain Trout, to be exact. It has just enough color to slightly show. The blocks, though, are all colors, and some of them have an odd construction where many patches of the background fabric were used so that the block looks like an "X". I knew a colored thread would show on these.

I could have gone with 10 different colors, but because I knew I was choosing just one quilting design for all 56 blocks, it made sense to pick only one color thread too. Both of these things help to create unity and calmness.

I chose this medium blue glide thread because all of the sashing squares were in the same color. I could have rationalized a taupe or a purple or a green too, but this seemed to make the most sense.

My biggest concern was how the darker color would appear on the lightest blocks. It was kind of interesting to see how the exact same quilting design looked completely different on differently constructed blocks! Using the blue meant I had to be very neat, as bobbles and wobbles would show.

The texture of a largely geometric design is pretty. Simple crosshatch conveys through the print in a way that feathers could not.

The quilt is huge, and fully justifies its 750000 stitches. Yup, three quarters of a million. I have definitely used more on a single quilt, but that is a lot! 

  This quilt can be seen in April at MQX East.

 Simple geometric elements like the diamonds and circles pop through the mass of busy print.

 I don't know what I would have done if the backing had been a beige solid (probably puke!). That is so much harder to be clean when it all shows. This backing is very busy and it will force those judges to look hard for any issues!

 I hope Marcia loves this and has fun with nearly 400" of binding! Can't wait to see it hanging in a few months!