(off) White Quilts…

It’s day 18 of our stay at home order? Time to catch up again.

After all the piecing shenanigans I just wanted to quilt! I do like some organic curves so that’s what I decided to stitch…

I layered up a 24″ square of off-white linen with a cotton backing and some wool batting and set off on my friendly BERNINA. I used the even feed system with a 1/4″ foot. (Remember it works differently to the walking foot but with the same results IMO)

Lots of lines. I left some spaces and decided I might try filling them in with a 1/4″ grid.

So I did. And here’s where I got to before I called it a day.

From another angle, so you can truly appreciate all the poof-i-ness 🙂Next day I went back and finished off. I squared my piece up. It had shrunk about an inch across the width where all the lines had pulled it together but just needed a very light steaming to lay nice and flat.

Maybe some hand stitching would look good, but what if I didn’t like it?

I know, I’ll make a smaller one and see what I think before I stitch on the larger one.

12″ square…
At this point I decided I needed some spaces in the middle section. I unpicked a couple of curves and added more grid work…

Let’s try some simple running stitch embellishment in a just-not-white variegated thread…I like it! How about a facing? I can do that!

Ta-da…Why did I trim the larger square before I embellished it? I don’t want to risk fraying the edges while I’m hand stitching.

I’ll add the facing first.Now I can add the embellishment. Just through the top layer and batting for a nice even stitch.Let’s look closer!A tip for stress-less stitching of organic curves…

If your sewing machine remembers the changes you make to your stitches when you toggle between them set one stitch as your quilting stitch (default length for my 60 weight Efina thread from Wonderfil, reduce the presser foot pressure a few points), one as a pivot point (length zero, width zero, take one stitch) and a third as a tie off stitch (0.5 length, zero width, take five stitches).

So I have a 12″ square and an about 22″ square piece finished and done. I have some more ideas but I got distracted after a message from a friend whose daughter is a nurse in Chicago. We’ll look at what I stitched for her and her friends another time.

For now here’s a narcissus I picked from my back yard before the last thunderstorms rolled through.
On Monday I heard the Vermont Quilt Festival in June has been cancelled. I’m going be home until July…