Man, oh man! I had the honor of quilting this awesome Kaffe Fassett quilt by Leslie Tucker Jenison. Leslie pieced her quilt based on Kaffe Fassett’s quilt pattern from the book Quilts in Sweden (pictured below-photo from amazon.com), using his fabric. Leslie also pieced the backing using some awesome linen and polka dots.
Leslie had requested some straight line quilting to follow the lines of the fabric pattern–I loved that idea. Quilting a quilt like this using a concentric design can be a challenge on the longarm, and you sometimes end up advancing and rolling back the quilt on the frame back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, (did I say back and forth already?) etc. To avoid doing that ONE MILLION times, I connected some of the lines, and I really liked the outcome of the quilting look.
The lines of this fabric are so amazingly deceptive and provide the illusion that this was painstakingly pieced. I love the wonky look of the finished quilt and really found the design brilliant! I have been wanting to do a stripe study (kind of like how some people do color or quilt block studies) for so long, and this made me move that up my priority list. Someday soon I’ll start that project.
The thread used was Magnifico in black and batting was Quilter’s Dream Orient with Quilter’s Dream Wool layered beneath the quilt top. This was quilted using electric channel locks on my Innova longarm (hand guided), and those electric channel locks make all the difference. I recently upgraded and had those installed from the basic manual channel locks that come on the machine.
The difference is this:
Manual channel locks:
- walk to the back of the machine and engage the channel lock
- quilt a straight line
- stop the machine
- walk to the back of the machine and disengage the channel lock
- walk to the front of the machine and move to new point
- repeat 1-5 over and again
Electric channel locks:
- Push remote button from front of machine to engage channel lock
- Quilt a straight line
- stop the machine
- push remote button from front of machine to disengage channel lock
- move needle to new point
- repeat 1-5 as needed (and your legs are breathing a huge sigh of relief from all that walking you just saved yourself)
I digress. Here’s some more amazing eye candy from Leslie’s quilt.
If you’re interested in purchasing the book, you can check it out here on Amazon.