Winter Ice Quilt

Last year I challenged myself to finish projects.....I am still working on that list.

I am pleased to say I've quilted Winter Ice, but not entirely happy with the end results but its another project that just needs finishing.

This quilt started as a scrappy swap that I ran at Needleworks in 2008.  The participants brought a listed amount of FQ or specific sizes of fabrics in the required colours.  In this case I think it was 11" strips or FQ of blues (darker) and whites.  We cut the fabrics into sections and shared them around.  I wanted a bigger quilt than a lap size, so I added more fabrics as I worked on the blocks.  We sewed Buzzsaw blocks. Here's a good tutorial.  

Because I like really big bed quilts, I added a 10" border to the quilt.  The quilt measures 113" x 113".  I had to take it to church and hang it over the balcony to take a picture its so big!

Then on to the quilting.  When I originally wrote the pattern/instructions for the Scrappy Swap quilts I made a prototype or practice quilt.  I had this top floating around, so I loaded it on the frame and started playing,  I was fairly satisfied with what I had come up with and took the quilt off the frame to load my big blue.   Then I went to Kamloops and took 4 classes with Claudia Pfeil and came home with completely different ideas.  So, I went ahead and just started quilting.  I stitched a variety of "snowflakes" in each white block and then a meander feather in the border and blue blocks.  While the stitching is not as nice as I had planned or hoped, it's done.

Claudia uses her plastic templates to mark her quilts.  I used my half circles and drew lines along the inside and outside of the curve.

I spent a bit of time planning the insides of the "snowflakes" as well as a different variety of borders. The plan was to work my way across the quilt and in each block stitch a different centre, inner border and echo'd outer border.   

I stitched the centres in a variety of different patterns.

I stitched the ring.

I echoed around the ring design.

I then stitched a variety of motifs on the outside to fill the white blocks.

The borders and blue blocks were stitched with an all over bump back feather design.  I feel fairly competent stitching these feathers now, although they are not my favourite.

I used the Faux Piped Binding to finish the quilt.  I have learned to ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS prepare my binding when I'm doing the quilt top.  That way I never have to hunt for binding fabric.