Swan Song

Geneva, Switzerland from the sky

Emily's heading off for a term in Geneva, Switzerland. They speak French in Geneva and Emily will be taking courses at the University there in French language and translation. Very exciting! But before heading off to foreign parts Emily quilted Rosie's 'Purple Pumpkin Seed' quilt.

This Juki Exceed 600 was perfect for the appliqué and piecing 

We've been busy collecting the fabric and appliquéing the pumpkin seed shapes, and piecing the blocks together. I ordered some White Sew Simple Super Soft  Cotton wadding from Doughty's online shop and some classic purple gingham for the backing. But now we were ready to get it all loaded on the frame and get quilting.

pinning detail - all layers of the quilt pinned to the first leader

We'd been playing around with quilting ideas for months on various bits of paper. But in the end we chose a scallop pattern to quilt round the inside of each seed and a feather to fill the square.

quilting design doodles

Then we had to decide about the threads. We chose a Lyrical Lilac  Magnifico #2122 from Superior Threads for the scalloping inside the pumpkin seeds. We thought that this shade looked nice against all the different colours of purple.

Magnifico #2122 Lyrical Lilac from Superior Threads

We went for a white silk from the Kimono Silk range for the feathers. We wanted a delicate look for this quilt and the Kimono silk was just the fibre to create the subtle texture that we wanted.

Kimono Silk #373 White Rice

One of the final stages in getting ready to quilt is to sew a sashing strip on the side edges of the quilt. This gives me a place to play with my tension before moving into the 'real quilt'.

Add notice the side sashing strips attached to each side of the quilt top

I try to do most of my starting and stopping on these sashing strips so I don't have to worry about sewing in the thread tails. The side sashing strips also provide the perfect place to attach the side tension clips. The side sashing makes sure that the side tension is nice and even.

playing with my thread tension on the side sashing strips 

Then at the end when I take the quilt off the frame, I can simply slice off the side sashing strips with the rotary cutter.

slicing off the side sashing strips once the quilting is finished

 Once all the design and thread choices are made and the quilt sandwich is loaded on the frame, the fun begins!