“Peace for Ukraine” quilt is finished!

 

NOTE: I will not be writing a blog post or newsletter next week as I will be in Paducah! If you want to follow along, I’ll be posting on Facebook and Instagram.

My donation to Pokey Bolton’s Handmade for Ukraine fundraiser is a wrap! I’m pleased with the result:

As always, it was not a direct path. That border gave me fits! A few of my attempts:

Oh that design was soooo pretty! I even tried different threads. Nope, this was awful, did nothing to enhance the center; in fact, it detracted.

I noticed in my research that a lot of Ukrainian textile art seemed to have repeating linear motifs. I thought this would enhance and not be distracting, like the fluffy attempt above. Nope.

It killed me to to quilt a simple piano key border, I wanted to free motion quilt those beautiful designs I had created! The quilt spoke back clearly and that plan was not to be. The piano key is exactly what it needed.

Since this was a whole cloth quilt, thread choice was key. I went through about 15 different threads before settling with this combination. Thread geeks can see the description of each thread in the caption above.

That wool thread is divine!

It gives beautiful and unique dimension to the piece and an almost hand embroidered look. It is big, fat and fluffy, oh my!

You do have to be mindful to clean up after you use that wool though.

The back is purty too! Just for grins I wanted to highlight the main section of the design with a bit of a contrast in thread, hence the lighter colored thread in the middle section. The backing is silk also, a gorgeous even weave from Germany.

I really like the back!

Now for a few geeky details:

Once again I used my sophisticated method of transferring my design to the quilt: print it out on regular printer paper, pin to quilt, stitch through the design, remove paper. Easy peasy. For small projects this works for me.

You do need the right tools for paper removal, some of the paper can be pesky to remove. The top tweezers are drug store tweezers; what is key is the angled tip. The Heidi Proffetty tweezers on the bottom are just awesome – strong, with precision tips. Ya gotta have some of these in your tool box.

For the stitched border lines on the yellow silk I used a triple stitch. I am surprised at how few sewists are familiar with this stitch; almost all machines have it. The triple stitch gives a big, beefy statement of a line; I used it frequently and love it!

More detail shots:

It’s hard to capture the beauty of that vintage yellow silk. It has a beautiful texture to it, like you washed it and it shrunk as well as crinkled. And those little white spots add a bit of interest.

The preview for the auction will go up April 25 and the auction will be May 1 – 6. There will be more details forthcoming on the above link. If you just can’t wait and want to get a sneak peek at some of the other donations, follow Pokey’s FaceBook page.

LOCALS:

I do have a few spots in my Free Motion Freedom! seminar May 12 – 14 at Meissner Folsom. I am very excited to be offering this locally. Bring your project(s) or let me help you find the perfect one and we can play, sew, laugh and eat together for 3 uninterrupted days! I will help you discover your own way to quilt your own quilts. It’s will be FUN and I can’t wait! There’s gonna be snotty chocolate too.

I’ll share at:

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