Midnight in Amsterdam

Hey there! 2 blog posts in one day! Must be a record for me. So, I have been working on this quilt for the past couple days. I thought I was going to quilt it really simple using the Statler Stitcher, but then changed my mind after I got it loaded up. I decided to try something a little fancy. I Custom quilt for others all the time, I may as well quilt one for myself too from time to time.  In a nutshell I spent a ton more time on it that I thought I would. I always think I am going to get all this quilting done while the kids are in school, but not really.

For this quilt I used various types of shot cottons, peppered cottons and Oakshotts. The background is Kona cotton in Silver. I used silver thread too. I love the feel of Peppered Cottons but they really are not easy to work with. They frayed for me like crazy which was really frustrating as I was quilting it. I kept spying little jolly colors through the silver background even though I had trimmed the back of the quilt top quite well.

I had a precious stack of Oakshott cross weaves that I had been saving for something special and I felt they worked well with the rest of the fabric. I liked working with the Oakshotts quite a bit.

I used a great deal of Ruler work for the quilting and I locked my channels on the diagonal so I could do the diagonal lines without having to hold the ruler still. I think I still need a ton of work with rulers to feel comfortable, but overall I am happy with the effect of the hooked feathers (all hand guided), the pearls and the straight lines.

Here is is on the table last night. I use that blue ruler to guide stitching in the ditch and other straight line work. Sometimes I like the ruler better than just locking my channels on my machine because the machine is seriously perfect with it's straight lines and I am not so perfect with my piecing. I think I can fudge it a bit better with the ruler...sometimes.

Here is the back. Lots and lots of thread. I used two layers of batting for this quilt to really make the quilting pop. The result is a very heavy quilt!

Also yesterday my friend came over for a private free motion quilting lesson and to rent time on one of my machines. She did such a great job!

In the time it took me to quilt one row of my quilt Traci had her entire twin bed sized quilt finished. Stitching in the ditch takes forever!

 She did great on Lady June ( My Gammill Supreme ). She kept saying this is so fun! Funny...I think that all the time too! Quilting is so fun!

xo,
Tia Curtis

PS, my Midnight in Amsterdam quilt has no real purpose. I thought about writing a pattern for it...when I have time. But for now it is resting the the stack of quilts that need to be bound.