Northern Wilderness Quilt

While I was very busy getting my Etsy shop opened and my crazy quilt seahorse kit done I did get some other things accomplished during the year.

When I first saw the Northern Wilderness block of the month I was awestruck.  In October I finished the quilting and put the binding on it.  And while I love it there were certain hard lessons I learned from it---mainly-----------plan out your quilting before you actually start it. And , you might want to think about the quilting before you even start the quilt top.Once I was done with the top, I was stymied as to how to quilt it.  Each block was a combination of pieced work and applique. I free motion appliqued the applique portion as I constructed the blocks.  This I believe was mistake one.  I should have waited until the actual quilting stage to do the free motion on the appliques.  I ended up having to do this again when i quilted.  I didn't want any quilting design within the appliques.  With the pieced portion of the blocks I started quilting 1/4" around each piece with the walking foot.  OH how I hated doing that, so after a few blocks I chucked that idea and quilted in the ditch.  Now that those two parts were done I had to decide what to do with all the background. Silly me, didn't listen to the professional quilter who said that meandering is one of the toughest free motion quilting designs to do. I went ahead and meandered. And that quilter, whom I don't remember which professional quilter said that, was right.  I guess it's because you can't really get that design in your mind so you have nothing to follow as you free motion quilt.

I did try to find ideas on the Internet as to how other quilters were quilting this quilt but none of the search engines I used produced any results.  I hope blogging my experience with this quilt will help other quilters out there. Not necessarily relating to how I quilted this particular quilt but the process I went through, or should have gone through as I tackled quilting the quilt.

Northern Wilderness Quilt completed.

I love each block in this quilt but, my favorite is the Dragonfly and Sunflower.  The colors are just so bright and happy in this block.

 

Along with finishing this quilt I've been  participating in both the Crazy Quilt Journal Project 2013 and the Bead Journal Project 2013.  Sadly, I've fallen behind on both but I still have a bit more than a month left to try to get caught up.  Next blog entry I hope to share some pictures of those projects.  And with that said, I think I should go work on those projects right now---oops, after that load of wash--------------DRATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Enjoy your day.