Art and Life

A while ago I wrote about finding a longarm quilter that fits your style. I know when I first started quilting I lived in Ohio and just found a local lady and basically said "just a meander in white is fine" for every project. Hey, forgive me, I was new and just really excited to see anything finished! I know better now. The quilting can change everything about your quilt!

My longarm quilter Teresa from Quilts2aT got together and made a wall hanging from the scraps leftover when I made 2 matching queen quilts for my bedroom.

Guestroom 

I had a few of the 9 patches leftover and put them together thinking it might make a good crib quilt, since there is also a crib in there. After bringing it over and hanging it on her design wall, we started talking about it. A lot. There was so much negative space. Too much negative space actually. This wasn't a killer piece on my part. It was sparse. It was missing something. We talked about the best usage for the negative space. Working on a quilt with someone can be like working on a painting with another artist. You paint a portion, hand it over, they work on it, maybe you get it back to add more, and so on. You know what the other artists aesthetic is, but you can't predict what the finished work will look like when it is all done. What she did was stunning. 

From far away you can see it is a lot of white space.

Closer you can see the ghost 9 patches. We called it The Canterville Quilt. Oscar Wilde fans, here is your giggle for the day. 

Movement and rests, quilting can be musical

I love the bubbles

Freehand, so every swirl is an individual

See? Amazing. We entered it in MQX this past week. We didn't win any of the prizes Wednesday, but yesterday Teresa walked by and Toby Lischko was pinning her faculty ribbon on our quilt!

yeah! We got a ribbon!

Toby Lischko and Teresa at MQX in Springfield.

How cool! Happy sewing!