Garden of Hexies

Last fall, our quilt club took a field trip to The Patchwork Place. On our excursion we were able to go into their "Book Room" and got some fabulous deals! My dear friend Loretta bought a book, no I can't remember the name of it now!, and made this quilt. She asked me to quilt it and I was so thrilled! I love to work on the more primitive, traditional quilts because it challenges me to do that kind of quilting. You can't put modern into this quilt!

When I mounted this quilt onto my frame I had no idea what was going to happen in the borders. I knew that the hexies inside the quilt would be quilted simply and with monofilament thread. There were so many color changes, from light to dark, that I wasn't going to continue to change thread and stop and start each pass. So I used mono and it worked out just fine!

 

 

You have to keep it simple sometimes.

Because I couldn't decide on border treatments I continued to quilt the inside of the quilt first. Now, when you decide to do this, you really have to baste the borders down so they don't shift as your quilt the inside of the quilt. It takes practice and patience... and a lot of measuring!

You can see near the take up bar that I did a serpentine basting stitch to secure the top border as I quilted the inside of the quilt.

Inside quilting with matching thread.

Look at those borders!

I was beyond excited about these borders. Boy did they take a little while to conjure up and complete! This was a soft quilt so I wanted something soft in the borders. I always like echoing the curves like these because it gives the eye a place to rest and creates motion. The feathers on the inside of these archers were just a necessary filler! And who doesn't like to quilt feathers! The straight line work in the border creates contrast to bring attention to the borders as well!

I wanted to show this picture again because I want you to see that the curved border treatment was only done on three sides of the quilt. I decided that aesthetically it was not necessary to do the curves on the bottom. I only did my straight line quilting in this area. To me, the vision of this quilt was in the garden. The curved border reminded me of a trellis.

I really enjoyed the process of this quilt and the ideas that were created by it. It is amazing how your creative mind can think of things and then you put them into practice. Of course, Loretta loved it too!

Enjoy the creative process. Sometimes I am one to get frustrated because my ideas are not coming to fruition or I just don't know what to do! Take a moment, take a breath! It will come.