I actually started this quilt before I got my longarm machine. I spray basted the quilt sandwich layers and tacked down the fabric with long basting stitches in the ditch of the borders, on my domestic sewing machine at the time. Then I put it away to handle more pressing matters and am just now getting it back out of the closet.
I love pre-printed quilt fabrics. Spoonflower.com has a bunch of what they call "cheater" quilts - fabrics that are printed to look like quilts. I love it - it saves me the time of having to piece together all those scraps of separate fabrics, and I can get right down to the part I really love - the QUILTING!
I did "stitch in the (imaginary) ditch" around all the squares in the center, to make it look even more like it was actually pieced together. Plus those "ditches" gave me places to hide my stitching when traveling from one place to another. I enjoyed playing with straight and circle rulers on this one.
All quilting is free-motion, hand-guided on an APQS longarm quilting machine.
Interesting to note - the gold fabric where you see a "rope" quilting motif - that fabric went through the 2013 flood that destroyed the lower level of our home, including my entire quilting studio. Unlike many others in neighboring towns, we in Black Diamond, AB, were able to get back into our wrecked homes within a couple of days to salvage what we could. I enlisted friends who weren't flooded to help us launder any clothing, bedding, towels, and FABRIC that looked like it might be worth saving. Some of the lighter fabrics were just too soiled and stained (from marinating in mud and sewage) and had to be thrown away. But my friends Lise and Tanya were able to work miracles with most of what we had. This gold fabric was one that got saved. You can see some fading and creasing in the fabric, but that doesn't bother me. I actually kinda love how it reminds me that we survived and are moving forward stronger than ever.
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