Quilting Rainy Days and Mondays

I've been working on this quilt for a while, made from Riley Blake's Rainy Days and Mondays line of fabrics plus a little from the stash. It's 76x 76 with a Quilter's Dream 70/30 batting and a generous untrimmed perimeter, so more like 86x86. So it's pretty bulky and dense. Also I'm quilting it for very utilitarian use, so it's not very fun. Not complete drudgery, but I love getting wild with the free motion quilting.

 I had planned to use my ruler foot and a curved ruler to do some continuous curves, but with the bulk of the quilt, I decided that would take too long. So I'm doing these twists, based loosely on the free-hand version of "Terry's Twists" in the small squares. And in the large squares I am quilting a large umbrella.

 

I'm thinking these QD poly batts are just too dense for what I like to do. I normally like poly (80/20) for the puff it gives my quilting, but their poly is different than most. It is fabulous under a wool batt for faux trapunto work though!

I've been telling myself that I must finish this quilt before I can really start on my Poured Out v.2 quilt, but other projects keep skipping into the line. A dress for my daughter, some baby shoes for the neighbor and my shop, some really fun and easy Kanazashi flowers, and I wonder if I'll ever get things done. Better than having nothing to do I suppose.

I keep feeling like I need to do some stitching in the ditch, but I keep telling myself that if this quilt was getting an edge to edge panto or other e2e design on a long arm it would not be stitched in the ditch. And I want it to be cuddly. It's gonna live on the couch.

Inspiration Strikes

I shared here how I was experimenting with a new version of my "Poured Out" quilt. Since that post I have reworked the water pitcher until I was satisfied with it and then....

This is from that earlier post, the jug has been reshaped and I've ditched the gray fabrics.

Nothing.

The range of grey fabrics just weren't working for me and I just didn't feel ready to move forward with this quilt. I just couldn't figure out what to do with the background. This quilt is even more personal to me and the feeling I'm trying to convey is darker, hence the use of a dark background.

So I put my creative juices on simmer....


And then one night.....it just flowed. I got out the sketch book and drew. Tears flowed too.

It's pretty rough and will be tweaked several times I am sure, but I'm liking it. The background will be black cotton sateen and those ugly words will be made by stitching densely around them. I think I will vary the thread colors on the black as I go.

Now to finish my current quilt and get started!