Autumn Leaves

This quilt was something rather different for me.  It's the first time that I actually bought a kit, thus I did not pick the individual fabrics.  It was also the first time I worked with stricktly batiks.  I have always loved batiks, but they are generally out of my price range.  This quilt is close to show quality, but there are enough imperfections that I don't know if I will ever enter it.

 

Autumn is my favorite time of the year.  I hardly decorate for any season, but for some reason, I really get into decorating for fall.  My glass pumpkin collection manages to get a little bigger each year.  When I saw the kit for this wall hanging and the example made up in the quilt store, I fell in love.  I was in luck.  It was December, and the one kit they had left was on sale.  I couldn't have gotten the same fabric or even cheaper fabric for the price I paid.  I was thrilled.

I have heard people rave about how wonderful duct tape is, but I am in love with masking tape.  I recently painted a bathroom and had lovely sharp edges where the white ceiling paint met the light green wall paint.  I use masking tap all the time when I quilt straight lines.  it makes a great guideline to follow, while pealing off easily and sticking well enough to use for several lines.  I used masking tape in this quilt to make large diamonds in the green and smaller diamonds in the burgundy.

For fun, I tried using one of my decorative stitches while I quilted.  Every other line is a leaf vine.  It added a nice extra texture to the quilt but it posed many challenges.  It took about twice as long to quilt, and I had to be very careful about getting the fabric to move freely back and forth under the feed dogs.  The picture above shows off one of the changes I made to the pattern.  The original pattern did not miter the corners of the orange border.  To me, the strips looked choppy and weird in the corners, so I decided that this would look more finished.  I was quite pleased with how it turned out.

(Autumn Leaves, 43 x 58, May 23, 2011)