Have a Heart.....

Remember this?

My jewel box quilt designed in EQ .....

After loading this quilt before Christmas and doing the ditch work, I had to take this one off the frame to do more pressing quilting. I've eventually got it quilted, with hearts...I never intended that...go figure.... but just in time for Valentines Day.

Terry Twists in the 'jewels' and whymsical hearts Jamie Wallen style in the 'boxes'....that's freehand hearts...no marking...every which way?  With a longarm you can't turn your fabric so you have to learn to quilt your design from all angles so when us longarmers say we are practicing that's what we mean...you got to lean to do everything from different angles. I did roughly draw out the hearts in the green border though and they got a bit of McTavishing in the middles! The white background fabric has mini feathered curls and the green background has stipple....you'll never believe that's the first time I ever used stipple in a quilt.  I left that green border till last and by the time I got to it I needed this quilt finished so I used stipple for speed but I do like the different texture it gives. The little white boxes in the border have more freemotion hearts. There's a scallopy curve with even more hearts in the red border with piano keys.....there's a lot of work in that quilt.

I really like the size of this quilt, it's 90" x 90", it's a great size on that queen/double size bed with a little room for shrinkage when washed....I recently said I don't like square quilts, well, this one is square and I like it.
I used Glide thread top and bottom and Hobbs poly as my roll was big enough but also because it's white and I wanted to keep the white fabric looking bright white.

By the time you reach the end of this post I think you will realise that I also like to take photographs...lots and lots of photographs.....

I've had a love/hate relationship with this quilt right from the beginning, then I doubted my decision to use that strange coloured batik backing but in the end it does add another dimension to the quilt and it matches my duvet and pillow cases perfectly, I'm going to keep this one for myself for a change for summer, well, my first freemotioned quilt has been on our bed for a long time, so a change is in order but I'll never get rid of my first real quilt, it will be back on the bed again soon!

Updated 15/02/2012...

My Quilt made 'Quilt of the Week' on MQResource....Thanks so much Suzanne and Jo Ann.