Monday, May 15, 2017

Freefall Quilt Along Step 5

Woo hoo!  We are HERE!  Some of you are all, 'been there done that' because you've got your tops all sewn up, but here is the official final step to assemble the 25 blocks into a flimsy along with some quilting ideas.
Here is Freefall, in flimsy form.  Tish based her colouring page on this layout, which is also downloadable from my Craftsy store (affiliate link) for free.

I stand before you to say do not follow this layout to a 'T'.  Yup.  I've said this in several places here on the blog and in the PDFs to note where three of my leaves point together.  Not good because there are so many seams coming together there and it makes for a bit of a lump when you quilt over that area.

Here is the Windfall layout as a flimsy:

Complete with a Bella bum.

You can tilt your leaves any which way you like, even the H1-3 leaves can be in various places as long as the shadow leaf 45-degree lines are correct.

Moral of the story: don't be seamy, be free, and tilt away! 😁

As for assembly, you may want to try my 'Book It' method, which I almost always use for assembling quilt tops. Basically you sew the quilt blocks in columns, chaining each column together as you sew pairs together.  This quilt has an odd number grid, so you'd have two columns of 'books' and then one column of singles.  I learned this way back when I did colourwash quilts and I had many 2" blocks to keep in exact orientation.

Quilting

I don't know about you, but every since I bought my first quilt magazine, or quilt book, and came to the 'Quilting' part of a quilt pattern, I got supremely upset and disappointed to read the phrase, "Quilt as desired."  I get a little happier when I read these days, "Sandra quilted flowing lines with echoes, and swirls in the background.  She quilted straight lines across the shadow leaf, treating it as a separate entity from the background, and ignoring the leaves that fall on it. She also quilted some ghost leaves in the background areas."

I get really ecstatic when I get a drawn diagram or a photo that shows the quilting!




And when I get closeups to study.
This was after the shadow leaf had all the straight lines quilted. And okay full disclosure: I had no clue was not totally sure what I was going to do in the background!
Freefall was quilted on my Bernina.


I went with quite large swirls, 3/8-1/2" spacing, echoes and of course a ghost leaf

Windfall was quilted on Avril, my HandiQuilter Avanté.
Windfall got a border of ribbon candy around the shadow leaf after I did several straight-line echoes of the shadow leaf

Each leaf that was in the background got its own design.
Feathers, with contrasting thread
Leaf veins with matching thread
More leaf veins
And some got dot to dot work and elongated figure eight and continuous curves.

Threads

Freefall was done entirely with one colour of thread, probably my favourite one for blending in with multiple fabric colours, Aurifil 2600.

Like my Bernina, Avril likes pretty much any thread I've used on her, from cotton to polyester to rayon, various brands and weights.
For Windfall, I used Essential cotton, Isacord polyester, Floriani rayon and Aurifil cotton.


So there.  I hope I've made you ecstatic, and given you ideas. This quilt is quite a graphic design, so you could do straight lines across the entire top; alternatively, you could do wavy 'organic' lines across its top.  I wanted to define the shadow leaf from the background when I planned my quilting.  You can use whatever threads you and your machine prefer.

You have exactly one month, that is until June 15, what would have been my dad's 91st birthday, to get your quilts assembled into tops if you haven't already done so, and then quilted up and bound ready for the final parade and prizes!  To see a list of the prizes, go here and here and here.
There are 4 fabric prizes, a copy of the book Crafted Appliqué, and 8 pattern prizes!

Again, I cannot say it enough: THANK YOU!! 😘😘😘😘😘😘😍😍 for taking a chance on a blogger doing her first quilt along, to my sponsors for being so agreeable to offer prizes, and to my followers for quilting along with me...even though, sadly, I did not quilt along on a third version - YET - with you due to IRL circumstances.  It means so much that you've done this, and I hope you've had fun and that you are pleased with your quilts! I know I am blown away (ha, pun not originally intended) by the beautiful falling leaves quilts I've been seeing!  I cannot WAIT for the parade in a month!  If you fell behind, not to worry (ha, been there done that, am there NOW with my own damn QAL oops, haha) you have a full month to get it together for the parade and be eligible for prizes.

Linking up
Cooking Up Quilts

17 comments:

  1. Hi Sandra,
    What beautiful quilts you have shared, and the quilting really enhances the design itself. I just love seeing the leaf in the background fabric mimicking the smaller leaves. It's hard to decide which one I like more ~smile~
    Roseanne

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow dear sister of mine, that texture is sumptuous on those quilts! <3

    ReplyDelete
  3. Windfall is deep and rich, Freefall glorious in those teals and greens. I still have the H3 blocks to do, all the rest are on a design wall, and I am so happy with this.Thank you SSOOO much for all the help, suggestions, pattern and details along the way.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Both quilts are fabulous. Thank you for putting this quilt along together for us. I have two of my final blocks done. Hoping to finish the other 4 this weekend but...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well, I am hoping to sew my top up this week! Hopefully I can get it quilted soon, too. What a fabulous QAL, Sandra. I am so glad I participated!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks for the quilting inspiration but knowing me and my limitation I like the look of just straight diagonal quilting. Sadly I won't be able to sew the top together this week since I had to bring in my Juki 2010 for servicing. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the making of the Free Fall blocks. I really enjoyed the quilt along and can't wait to finish my top. Thanks for hosting and you did a great job as a first timer.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I didn't join in as I knew I didn't have the time, I have loved reading of the progress everyone has made though. It has been almost as good as doing it myself. I'll have to try 2600, thank you for that.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wow Sandra, I am in awe of your amazing quilting. It just looks fabulous on both quilts, but I guess the Avanti has a bit of an advantage to helping to give a bit more freedom to move the quilt around. The ribbon candy and shadowing bring such a great dimension to the leaves. Fabulous.

    ReplyDelete
  9. It's really not like me to have pieced already ahead of the game ! A first I think . I'm fairly sure I'm going straight or wavy line quilting but it may be in different directions . I'm also thinking maybe some hand perle cotton but that might be too fussy

    ReplyDelete
  10. Congratulations on finishing your first QAL! It will be a lot of fun to see the parade next month. I love that you showed so many close-up shots of your quilting - it looks fantastic!

    ReplyDelete
  11. All that scrumptious quilting really gives a lot of beautiful texture to your quilts.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Looks like a ice cream cone full of stars. Wow!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Beautiful quilts and outstanding quilting. Waiting patiently for the parade. Congrats on your first QAL.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Sandra: It was a blast quilting along with you. We put our quilt up on the design wall at the sew along at our guild and everyone was oohing and awing over it. It's very beautiful....and I can't wait to display it with the others. Hopefully it will be quilted but there are a lot of moves and babies and weddings and visits from kids that live over seas amongst the three of us so we'll see!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Beautiful quilts exquisitely quilted!!!

    ReplyDelete
  16. I missed the link-up, as there was some serious trouble with the H3 blocks, well, just one of them. They are all done now, and final arranging will be done this week.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Both quilts are gorgeous. Thanks for the close-ups of all that lovely quilted texture.

    ReplyDelete