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Friday, April 7, 2017

Santorini - Landscape Quilting Part 3

Santorini, one of my favorite places to visit in Greece, is almost done.
The buildings are quilted in different patterns, giving the scene lots of interesting texture, and the street is paved in pebbles.

wall and road texture

Though it's difficult to see, the pebbles get smaller as they flow toward the wall in the back, which is an important element to aid in the perspective of the piece. 

Another element is emphasizing details. In the picture below, the dark shadow is stitched over with black thread,


shadow quilting

and the grey shadow is stippled, which will match the stippling of the wall.

shadow and wall quilting

And inside the window, the quilting not only makes the area darker, but it also mashes down the batting. The cream trim around the window is left unquilted so that it can stand out and away from the window. It's those little details that add to the realism, and are really a result of common sense.

Keeping that in mind, the middle building is left unquilted, 

unquilted building

because I didn't want it to blend in with its window or side, both of which are in the 'background'.

Then finally, there's the sky. Cathy has four different ways to quilt skies, and I opted for the more simple long, wavy horizontal lines. The sky is crystal clear, with no hint of clouds.

drawing out sky quilting

This time I used a walking foot and some pins to use as guidelines. An embroidery technique of using jump stitches avoids stitching numerous times around the steeple.

jump stitches

Clean and easy to trim away!

jump stitch trimming

Cathy has many more quilting suggestions in the Lovely Landscape Quilts book, such as water, hills, mountains, and foregrounds. I highly recommend this book if a landscape or pictorial quilt is in your future.

Happy Quilting!



 









7 comments:

  1. Absolutely fantastic, I think I need this book.

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  2. your quilting is coming along nicely - love that sky

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  3. Now that's a work of art! What do you do with those threads that you used the jump stitches with? Do you have to do some kind of burying? I never have learned how to do that.

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    1. I took a couple tiny stitches next to the steeple to act as a tie off.. Not too much though, so it doesn't show. Then clipped both ends of the threads. figure this is going to be a wall quilt and not handled much, so why go overboard. I have done the 'bury the threads with a needle' on other projects, but my tiny stitches from the domestic machine are hard pressed to come out!

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  4. That looks amazing. I love the inside of the window.

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  5. It's all coming together marvelously! I had the same question as Janice about burying the threads, or did you double stitch at the end and beginning where you cut the threads? Inquiring minds want to know, lol!

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    1. I did a small back stitch at each edge. Not too much, so that it wouldn't show. This quilt is not going to be washed, so no need to go overboard in thread lock or burying. I do have some small tails on the backside, which judges may comment on (along with thread tension!). It will go into the fair, but not any big national show, so not worth my time to bury everything.

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Thank you so much for commenting...you just made my day!