quilting

Modifed Charm Quilt 108" x 108" c. 1995-98

We decided that one of our challenges at the Denali guild would be to do a charm quilt. About half of our members were beginning quilters who would not have a large stash available to them so we "modified" the rules for a charm quilt. It could be any pattern, not just a one-piece pattern, and you could add one fabric as a background. I chose a fan block, using black as my background. My original design was to have the fans circle and meander over the quilt top moving from one color into another sort of like a watercolor wash quilt.

I'm not quite sure what happened, but the colors didn't flow from one to another so I came up with this design. After I got it all done, my husband asked what I planned on doing with it...he liked it and thought it would look great on our bed. I had already put the binding on the quilt and it was only as big as the top of our mattress. But I got the idea that I could build a "frame" to go around the quilt using large "fans" in the corners and then just set the original quilt into the frame. Easy, right?
Wrong. Not only was my sewing machine giving me fits, but it seems that the frame was not quite square. It looks fine on the front side, but the back is a mess. In some places there was barely enough material to turn under and others there was lots of excess fabric...and we won't even mention the corners. I finally decided that if there weren't any tucks or pleats on the front side that I'd be happy. The quilting is awful...I used a pale green on the backing with matching thread on the back and black on the top. My machine would lose tension and all of a sudden the pale green thread would show up on the top. I ripped more stitches than I left in I think. At some point I gave up and took a black magic marker and touched the light threads on the top of the quilt and called it good. Of course some of it bled over to the back so I have little black dots all over the pale green backing. I still love the quilt and it gets used on our bed each year...I just try not to look at the back...EVER!

Labels: charm quilt, fan block

posted by quilter99755 @ 12:57 PM