This stunning quilt top was made by Linda Whitford of YK. It's a Quiltworx pattern called Diamond Wedding Star. Isn't it beautiful? To be honest, I was a little intimidated by all of the wide open space, but very excited too! Here is the quilt fully quilted. It's 97" square.
The threads I used were Glide 60wt Linen for the background, Coral for the center stars, and Satin for the black spikey areas. MagnaGlide in the bobbin. I used one layer of Tuscany Wool over one layer Hobbs 80/20. This took 25 hours to quilt, including design and marking time.
This was quilted entirely hand guided on our Gammill Vision2 using Coast Regulate 14/10 for the ruler work, and Constant 30-35 for the feather work.
Keep reading for closeups of the quilt, and few insights on how the design came together!
Here is a photo of the quilt getting ready to load. See all that wide open space? See why I was a little skeered? I pulled up my big girl you-know-whats and got it loaded, entirely basted and ready to go, even if I wasn't!
My consult with Linda was pretty simple and straightforward. She liked traditional and feathers, but the rest was up to me. So the first thing I did was break up all that open space with a "frame" to go around the beautiful stars. I sketched this out on paper first and then began by stitching the channels for the frame.
Then I knew that I wanted to do feathers in the middle of the melons and continuous arcs in the peels. So I did this for all of the stars, knowing that this would be a great way to stabilize everything.
I also snuck in and ditched the center star and while I was there, pebbled around the star. More dense quilting really helps to make the center star pop. I didn't quilt the inner of the star at this point, as I knew I was going to change thread color for that.
Then I went to work on the interior negative space. A bit of marking and planning here, and some really teeny pebbles in the spines, but I love the overall effect.
Next up was the background behind the black spikes. I knew these would need dense quilting around them so they would pop, so tiny feathers FTW again! I also echo ditched on the inside of this space to define it from the adjacent feathers.
The once all the center background was stitched I moved on to the borders. I spent a lot of time on these. ALOT!
The feature of this border is the curvy feather, of course. I love the movement! 1/2" channels gives them some space to shine, and then Pearls with Curls on either side. Another 1/2" channel and a classy Triple Stitch to frame it all out.
Quilts this large can be difficult to photograph! We found a wall large enough, and just the right lighting and just look at all that insane texture!
We even managed to show some texture on the back of this quilt, despite the busy print.
Thanks for taking a look at this beauty! If you'd like to see video tutorials on the techniques & tools I used to quilt this, step by step, you can join my exclusive group called "How Do I Quilt This?". It's a closed facebook group where I share oodles of insider tricks and techniques, for most of the custom quilts I do. For a mere $49.00/year cdn you can join and start learning! Click HERE to join!
Wanna see what I'm up to next?
It's a Dinner Plate Dahlia made by Nancy Strath, Certified Quiltworx Instructor at Bow Bench Retreats.
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