About 2 years ago I picked up a charm pack of Moda’s “Chocolat” line. There were 50 5″ squares in the pack originally. I remember blogging sometime after making the quilt that somewhere in the vortex of my sewing room I lost 1 piece. I looked and looked and looked and never found it, hence the title for the quilt: “49 pieces of Chocolat”.
This is also the quilt that I first used wool batting. Oh I love quilting with wool batting! I would make every quilt with wool batting if I could, except I’m concerned that some people are allergic so I don’t, particularly if the person I’m making the quilt for is a little person.
One thing I learned with this quilt is that wool batting likes to be quilted very evenly across the surface and doesn’t like to have too many open spaces left. See the outer border there? The baby blue with the chocolate dots? I didn’t quilt that area originally and when I washed the quilt it puckered up like someone sucking on a lemon.
Not pretty.
Not pretty at all.
That’s why yesterday I washed the quilt, used a bit extra fabric softener and pinned the quilt to my design wall. I must have pinned for over an hour. Pulling and stretching and coaxing this quilt to flatten out around the edge. I’ll take it down later today to see if it worked if it did I’ll add some quilting to the edge of the quilt.
This quilt also shows me how my quilting has changed over the last couple of years.
I am much more careful and confident. I’m enjoying the process of machine quilting as much now as I did then. I think you can see I used two threads through the needle with this. I’m going to try that again. I have a whole lot of rayon thread that I want to use up.
This is still one of my favorite quilts as it’s one quilt that I made for me. Okay the cats use it to hide and nap, but it’s my quilt. I find for the most part we quilters are a generous lot, most of our quilts go to friends, family, people we don’t know who are in need.
I have a quilt design on paper that, if I can pull it off will be headed to the Little Quilt Auction (NQA) in the summer. It will be something quite different for me and I’m looking forward to the challenge of making it and seeing if I can pull off the vision that’s in my head.
Oh, here’s one of the cats that likes to nap under the quilt:
He’s a bit of a chatter box and a bit camera shy so I’m amazed that I got him to look at me while I snapped his picture. This is Barnum…my big ball of fluff!
Teri
How pretty! I hope all the quilt stretching works out! Good luck! Barnum is very handsome!
I love the colors in this quilt. You’re right about you quilting. You’ve come a long way. I hope the stretching works on those borders. If not, Barnum will still love it! Beautiful kitty.
Carolyn in Kerrville, TX
Lovely picture of Barnum, Teri – he looks like he has a long white beard in it. The chocolate quilt is lovely, hope you can save the borders. I look forward to seeing the quilt that is currently on paper and wish you luck with pulling it off.
You should see him from the back, he looks like he has suede boots!