well, more times than not!
A while back my friend and fellow longarmer, Natalie, called me telling me she had a quilt that I needed to do! Okay, intrigued.... she texted me a picture. Wow... my brain was already buzzing with ideas. Then... it hit me, the due date. Oh, I will squeeze it in, it was much too beautiful of a quilt to let slip through my fingers. I don't have the original texted picture, but here's the first one I took of this beautiful quilt. Oh, and it belongs to Kathy. That's all her hand applique work, and it was stunning to say the least!
So real quick, before any ditch work and stabilizing stitching, let me play with at least one of these big open borders.
FUN, this quilt is going to be FUN!
Okay, getting ready to share a secret. Here is my super-duper, fool-proof, you'd think I'm a rocket scientist border layout. Mark the center of the quilt, then mark the center of each half, then mark the center of each quarter, and so on, and so on, until you have divided up the border space into however many sections you need. Because no matter how good I am, I can't guess it to fit!
So then the stabilizing and ditch work begins... around every leaf, in all those ditches, and around all that beautiful celtic knot work -- and days went by.
Oh, and the best part of all this stabilizing... being able to see what's going on in the quilt and correct any wonkiness in borders before any quilting -- because no matter how well you piece, every now and then a wonky sneaks in and tries to ruffle your borders!
a little wonkiness
a pin or two to suck it up and balance it out
and voila, fixed that border!
And that's the magic of a good longarm quilter! Yes, I know, tooting my own horn, but hey, it's my horn!
Okay, back to the beauty that is Kathy's quilt.
outer green border
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inner green border
large yellow border
center knot work
back detail
full photo of finished quilt
Well, I was thrilled with how this quilt turned out. Kathy really seemed quite pleased as well when she picked it up. I'm glad that Natalie thought this quilt was better suited toward my style of quilting. Thanks Nat! Thanks Kathy!