Quilting the Quilt Blog Party

The top is done.  Now on to what often is considered the biggest challenge in finishing your quilt – how to quilt it.

One of my favorite parts of a longarm group I was a part of was the show and tell.  Members were encouraged to bring quilt tops they were struggling with.  The group would typically throw out a number of ideas on how they would quilt the top – often feeding on suggestions from the other machine quilters.

I want to bring this concept to the internet.  My plan is to post a photo of an unfinished quilt top.  You will be encouraged to blog about how you would quilt the top.  Others can read your post and you can read theirs.

Here is the quilt:

Irish Eyes Quilt Top by Kari Schell - Inspired by a quilt by Irma Gail Hatcher

About the quilt
This quilt has been sitting in my unfinished top pile for at least a decade.  The name of the quilt is Irish Eyes.  I think I saw the quilt in Quilter's Newsletter Magazine.  I'm not even sure if instructions were provided.  

The quilt that inspired this was made by Irma Gail Hatcher.  It was part of the 40 finalists in Quilter's Newsletter Magazine's Contest: Discovery - A New World in Quilting. It won a Judge's Award, and appeared on the cover of The Quilter, a magazine published in London, England. It was selected as Fairfield's Batting Christmas quilt and appeared in their ads in October, November, and December, 1992.

Blog Party Guidelines
1.   Create a blog post between April 12-18 focused on how you would quilt this top.  You can use any media you want to draw out your planned solution.  Art and Stitch, Electric Quilt or any basic drawing program would work.  Or just print out a photo of the quilt and draw your solution by hand.  Take a photo of your results and upload it to your blog. 

2.   On April 12th,  I will set up the party on my blog.  Post a link to your blog post through the inlinkz button on that blog.  Include a link back to the party (i.e. the April 12th post) in your blog.

4.   Review and comment on at least two other participant’s blog posts.

5.   Agree to be notified about subsequent link-ups.  (I will add you to a mail list to keep you informed about these link-ups.)

Suggestions if Using Art and Stitch

Copy the photo of the quilt top. 

Within Art and Stitch, select Paste Backdrop.  This is in the "Edit" section. Select where you would like to save the image.

FYI - I believe Paste Backdrop is a new feature in Version 3.  It makes savings backdrops even easier as you can do it on the fly as developing a project.

Select the backdrop and change the width to 47 inches.  This will give you an approximate quilt size to work with.

You can now draw your quilting option directly on the quilt image.  I did find it easier to lighten the backdrop a bit.  I also changed the pen size to 2.0 so that it stands out a bit.

Suggestions If Using Electric Quilt

Save the image on your computer.  Within EQ, go to the "Work on Image" tab.  Import this image.  

Resize the image to 10" wide.

I did try to resize the photo to to 38 x 38 (the maximum block size).  However it made the image way too large and it no longer worked within the program.  So I decided to work with a smaller size for the block and the quilt..

Save to Sketchbook.  In the Sketchbook photo tab, copy the image to fabrics.

In the "Work on Quilt" tab,  set up a new quilt using the Horizontal Layout.  Set the number of blocks to 1 horizontal and 1 vertical.  Set the size of the block to 10 inches. Delete the border.

In Layer 1, color your block with the new fabric you just created. Now you can add quilting motifs via layer 2.  You can create your own or you could add motifs from the library.

You could also import the image on the "Work on Block" tab.  Crop a section of the quilt image to work with a smaller area at a time.

I'm hoping this quilt is inspiring you to create some designs of your own, or use some of your existing designs and stencils.

I would love to see what you develop and look forward to your linking your blogs to next Saturday's post.  I will be working on my own design ideas this week.

If you aren't blogging, come back to see all the ideas quilters have developed.

Happy Quilting.

Kari

---

Sign up for my newsletter to stay current on what's happening in my studio and learn more quilting tips.  As a thank you, I'll send you a FREE pattern for this small maple leaf quilt.