Quilting is finished!

Soooo, I’ve been working on this quilt for over 2 years and…..I just finished quilting it! I’m not ready to reveal the whole quilt. That might be silly, but I have decided I don’t want to show the whole thing until it juries into a show. The idea of the quilt is that it is made with white silk dupioni with inserts of randomly pieced strips of varying widths. In addition, there are big ole honkin trapunto’d bubbles scattered across the piece. I love it.

I think it is a very joyful piece and it makes me smile. I could not for the life of me get the color right. The actual white is snow white.

Doesn’t that just make you smile? I used wool batting which does give it a bit of a yellow cast. I love wool batting but there is not a truly snow white wool batting. It’s a tradeoff using wool batting on white fabric of any kind – there will be some yellowing. I could add another layer of fabric to keep it from showing through but I don’t like the bulk of the added layer. This quilt is light as a feather!

I am thinking about adding more definition to the feathers with some Inktense or colored pencil, put down with a very light hand, just in the crevices. It will make those feathers pop! But I’ll have to do a good bit of experimenting first as it is quite a commitment to lay down colored pencil on white silk. Oh how I love feathers!

I did have to do some marking on this quilt and I used my blue washout markers. I see this all the time in class – a student will remove the blue marker marks by spraying with water. Noooooo – that alone will not do it! All that will do is take that marker’s chemical and distribute it into the batting or backing of your quilt:

This is the back of the quilt in an area in which I sprayed away the blue wash out. In this case I did spray with water because I wanted to see what it would look like with the marks out. You can’t see any marks on the front but as you can see, the marks bled to the back. I will go in later and thoroughly rinse my quilt to get all the blue marker out. I usually put it in the tub in cold water and swish it around for 5 minutes. If you don’t take the time to rinse out all of the blue washout marker, once it’s laundered, you will end up with a yellow tobacco-colored stain on your quilt.  That is butt ugly!

I really don’t want to immerse this quilt but I still need to get all that marker out. But soaking might cause the trapunto’d parts to get all wrinkly as well as the rest of the quilt. I don’t want that, so I am going to spray it down thoroughly with a garden sprayer instead. I will run a couple of gallons over it and that will wash out the blue marker.

I will heavily spray my quilt while it lays on the fake turf. I will have cleaned the fake turf by first hosing it down. The turf is perfect because it holds the quilt up off the surface so no water can accumulate on the back. Quilters have the oddest tools!

For the binding, I am random piecing:

I think that will nicely frame the quilt. I don’t see a fancy border on this quilt, just a simple and colorful binding.

I do have another new family member, as featured by Vanna, aka Miss Bayley:

The IGGI is kind of like a tiny LAURASTAR, a small, hand held steamer. I have put her in my closet. My Big LAURASTAR is across the house and takes 5 min to warm up. Miss IGGI takes just 2 or so minutes to warm up and can reside in my closet where she will be found refreshing and de-wrinkling my wardrobe. I’m thrilled to have her in my home.

A side note, I had previously spelled her name as Bailey and Hubby thought she was a Bayley. So Bayley she is!

I’ll be posting at:

Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday
and
Finished or Not Friday