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]]>The post Lucy’s Quilt & Colour Theory Tips appeared first on MachineQuilter.
]]>The stars of this show are the Juki TL QVP Mini straight stitch and the Juki 2200 QVP long arm machines. Although the Juki TL QVP Mini straight stitch is my personal favourite for machine quilting, it also makes quick work of piecing with it’s fast speed and even stitching.
We used lots of different fabrics to create Lucy’s quilt. Many are familiar Kaffe Fassett fabrics, while others are similar in style and tone. These wild intense highly-saturated florals are kept in check by the simplicity of the piecing. Lots of loud bright fabrics could just dissolve into noise. But this quilt is saved by the simplicity in the piecing. The simple piecing allows the complexity of the fabrics to shine through in all their brightly coloured glory.
We only used three block types – a larger 9 inch square, a smaller 3 inch square and a 3 inch by 9 inch rectangle. By following some simple rules we were able to maintain a satisfying look and still use all those crazy, bright and loud fabrics!
The three blocks should be used with three types of fabric. The larger squares are cut from fabrics with large, floral patterns. The smaller squares are all brightly coloured plain fabrics, allowing breather moments between the different patterns. Think of them as full stops at the end of a sentence. The rectangles are all stripy fabrics, cut so that stripes run perpendicular to the length of the rectangle. The stripes almost act like fences separating the larger blocks of vibrant colour from each other.
We put lots of thought into the arrangement. We wanted the colours to be spread evenly throughout the quilt often using the stripes to harmonise contrasting colours.
Sometimes a quilt is all about the quilting, sometimes it’s all about the piecing. Lucy’s quilt is all about the colour. The fabric’s already doing a lot of the talking. So we used the quilting to amplify the voices already present, rather than adding new ones. We used a slightly different line design for each block type so the texture would highlight the different block types.
Lucy’s quilt was quilted by Emily on the Juki 2200 QVP long arm. For the larger squares, we used a large swirling, feather based pattern, complementing the large floral prints in these blocks. In the smaller plain squares, we used a simple spiral swirl, which could be taken as the simplified version of the larger pattern. The swirls work well in the squares as they fill the space and emphasise the centralised nature of the square, which is naturally a static shape. In the stripy rectangles, a kind of uniform stipple was used to highlight the stripes and give them texture, emphasising the movement in these blocks.
In this quilt we used a brightly coloured tri-lobal polyester with a 3 inch colour change. Believe it or not, for this quilt it acts as a neutral thread, particularly if we define neutral as a thread that doesn’t show. A grey or cream thread would have stood out on this brightly coloured quilt. But the bright variegated Fantastico thread blends in beautifully! We used a Fantastico thread with yellow, orange, lime green and pink called Flower Power #5043 and it just seemed to melt straight into the fabric, giving just the right texture. Fantastico is brilliant for long arm and any machine quilting; we think it’s, well… fantastic.
Lucy loved her quilt! It’s keeping her warm and cosy as she works towards her nursing degree. I loved the quilt so much that I had to make another. What fun to choose a few more of my favourite bright fabrics, add a vibrant thread, a dash of know-how in the quilting, and an element of fun. The result is another lovely quilt which is rich in colour and texture, but still simple and satisfying. It all comes from building intensity around three simple pieces. We like to think of it as ordered chaos!
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]]>Here’s a short video clip showing how to load the layers of your quilt onto our Machine Quilter frames. Some things are just better with moving directions. We hope this helps you to get off to a good start.
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“Don’t you think that
Daisies are the friendliest
flowers?” Meg Ryan
in “You’ve Got Mail”
Our Sunshine Box May Flowers line design is a daisy! This is one of my favourite line designs. It looks great and it’s easy to do. Making the long thin petals is good practice for other line design too. Notice how striking the daisy pattern looks against the black. And here it looks superb as an extension of the vivid floral design already printed in the fabric.
By choosing thread colours already in the fabric, these quilted daisies fit right in; they look like they’re meant to be there. We’ve chosen a pretty yellow tone-on-tone variegated yellow for our Sunshine Box. Just to mention a couple other goodies; there’s 2 bobbins of Bottom Line thread in our yellow and pink theme colours and a bag of silk daisies and buttons for embellishing.
Can you see the ‘eyelashes’ in the image below? You’ll notice them especially around the curves. Eyelashes are a sign of tension problems. This month we filmed a special section for dealing with tension issues. So if you struggle, as we all do from time to time, with tension issues, we’ve got some tips and tricks for how to get it sorted!
Our trouble shooting check list will get your tension balanced and your stitching looking lovely, even around the curves.
Want to find out more? View our May Flowers Little Box of Sunshine trailer.
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]]>We used a particularly lovely cone of Fantastico from Superior Threads called Rainy Dany #5118 The one inch variegated turquoise shades create a dreamy rainy day texture. Last year we used Opalescence for this box. We swapped because Opalescence was out of stock, but we will make sure to include Opalescence in an upcoming box.
Our April little Bags of Moonshine offer a mid-grey Magnifico 3,000 yd. cone called Stainless Steel #2165 – that’s just right for drawing clouds. Grey is such a useful colour to have in your thread stash and the free-motion clouds video tutorial teaches a good line design to have for landscape and seascape projects.
Here’s the practice piece set up on the Machine Quilter frame with the JUKI TL QVP Mini lockstitch sewing machine and our Nifty Grip speed control handles. Below is a nice up-close quilting detail. Clouds come in handy on all sorts of landscape and seascape projects and our Moonshine tutorial teaches 3 different cloud shapes. These particular clouds were stitched with the Fantastico Opalescence.
One of the best things about having a thread stash is that you can mix and match your threads. The Magnifico mid-grey Steel thread would also look great outlining the umbrellas in the Lecien theme fabric.
Here in the UK we often have to make our own sunshine! Our Sunshine and Moonshine tutorials are designed to make you happy when skies are grey.
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