This morning I jumped out of bed, excited to baste the three layers of my ocean quilt together. I had arranged with a friend to borrow his living room for the morning, on account of the size and lack of furry animals there.
The first step was laying out the backing fabric, a dark blue I hand dyed. I lay out over that the batting, a nice cotton batting I purchased at our local craft shop. Over that, I lay the much labored over Ocean Waves pieced top. It took a few tries to get flat as the grain of the fabric in the many pieced triangles made the overall grain of the quilt wonky. Once happy with the three layers, I began to pin.
I have a large pile of pins from previous quilts, my favorite method of basting. Armed with an audio book as well, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, I began to pin, spacing out about six inches between pins. This is a bit wider I think then I’ve done in the past, since I had a lot of pins left at the end, so it will be interesting to see how all the layers hold up over time. Hopefully with no shifting!
Rolling up the quilt into a sandwich to transport home, I returned the living room furniture to its original position and began thinking of the next step with anticipation – the quilting!
The quilting thread I ordered – a soft gray blue – already arrived in the mail. I know for the borders I want to quilt in a waving fan pattern, for the triangles I want to outline their shape with straight stitching, but what about the black squares? Traditional Amish quilting has these blocks quilted often with a feather circle. So far my choices are very traditional, so it would follow and fit that I do that too. But the feather circles aren’t calling to me. What would you quilt in the black squares?
waves?
Of course, brilliant! So glad I asked. It seems so perfect . . . I’ll start sketching a few options.
sewsweet and sewbeautiful!
Thank you!
The hard part, what pattern for the quilting? Have you thought of a wave?
Or clam shell? I would think you would want to stick to the ocean theme.
It will be beautiful, whatever you choose.
Totally, keep with the ocean theme. I have been up until this point. Can’t wait to go to my sketch pad. Will update you soon!
Waves, yes! I imagined a Japanese style wave design before I read anyone’s comments. Maybe one, large, graceful, muti-lined curl? You can use my living room for layering/basting anytime. No animals here except two-leggeds.
I have a japanese quilting book, I’ll pull that out and take a look. I remember some examples of what you are imagining . . . Thanks for the great ideas!
[…] I came across half square triangles. I didn’t know about them. In fact, I pieced an entire half square triangle quilt without knowing about them. I was floored. I was thrilled. I couldn’t wait to try it. I […]