Whimsical Garden quilt, made by Beth.

Apr 20

Beth made this absolutely stunning needle turn quilt, pattern is Whimsical Garden by Sue Daley. She requested dense custom quilting and on point cross hatch. To say that was excited was an understatement!! Beth asked how much I like doing double batts, and I love the combo of 8020 cotton/poly on the bottom with a wool layer on top of that. The loft and texture it creates with the quilting is just perfect!

This is when it was fresh off the longarm. It’s so fun to sit and look at quilts when they are done, and see how everything looks all together.

I was talking with a friend about combining different textures when I quilt...the hard lines...the scallops...and then the free random fillers. They work together so well. Different scales are important, especially with lines, weither the lines are curved or straight. I did 1/2” lines in the outside border, and 1” squares on the inner grey border. For both sets of lines I used Linda from The Quilted Pineapple edge rulers. I used the 8” for the outside border, it’s shorter, and the 12” for the inner border because it’s longer for the cross hatching.

When deciding on the size of scallops to do along the edge of the borders, I measured the width and length, and the lowest divisible number was 3”. So I measured every 3” and marked it, and then I used a 3” circle ruler to quilt from mark to mark. I used a 4” circle ruler to quilt the quarter inch echoed line outside the scallop. I could have left the original scallops and not echoed, however I think the scallops would have been a little lost next to all the free hand filler in the white fabrics. I love to enchanted things just a touch more. I did a 4” scallop on the center piece, using a 4” and 5” circle ruler.

I used like I mentioned above, a base layer of 8020 batting and topped it with a wool layer to get that fabulous texture. I also used a 30 tex cream Perma Core A&E thread and a light grey thread for the center grey border.