Santorini, Greece

It's a beautiful day in Santorini, Greece!

The sun so bright, the sky so clear and blue. The beautiful church steeple absolutely shines!

As do the walls of the buildings, with their fascinating twists and turns.

Makes me want to visit Santorini all over again!

I hope you've enjoyed the visit as much as I have! 

For more closeup pictures and landscape quilting tips, check out: 
Santorini - Landscape Quilting Part 1
Santorini - Landscape Quilting Part 2
Santorini - Landscape Quilting Part 3

and to view the original picture and the making of the quilt in fabric, check out this post, So Long Road2CA 2015.

Happy Quilting!

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.

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,

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

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, 

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.

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.

Clean and easy to trim away!

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!

 

Santorini - Landscape Quilting Part 2

Back for another day in Santorini - such a beautiful place!

My quilting adventure continues, and this time the discussion is about the stitching. The first round adds stitching to every butted up seam, which will hold all the layers together, and stabilize the piece. Since I was working with clear poly thread, the iron bars in the window and on the gate got some detail stitching too.

Notice a free motion foot in the above picture. Holy smokes - I'm actually doing sit down free motion work! It has been years since I did any. So why now? It all comes down to needle size.

I commented last week that some of the zigzag stitching could be seen, even with a 8/60 size needle. Imagine the hole that a huge, fat 100/16 longarm needle would leave! A lot of fused fabrics aren't pliable enough to bend back into shape to make the hole small again. So, my dear Innova friend, Tess, you're not invited to this party!

And that's okay. I'm rather enjoying this free motion process, though it's far from perfect. I'm certainly no Diane Gaudynski, and quilt judges will have a field day with my stitching. Whatever. It's getting quilted and I'm enjoying it. That's what matters, right?

Anyhoo, one day Massdrop had a deal on a Superior Threads Kimono Silk Thread pack, with neutrals that would be perfect for Santorini. Plus I wanted thin thread for fine details.

Though it took awhile to arrive, that's ok, because it gave me time to ponder how to quilt Santorini. 

My go-to process is to put vinyl on the top, and start drawing with a dry erase pen.

Referring to the original picture, I started filling in, and getting a sense of what I wanted to do.

After that much drawing, I figured it was enough to get me started. Once I had those parts done, the rest would fall into place, in both texture and density. I didn't need to spend the time to draw it all out, as plans change.

Notice that the stitch designs are rather simple: pebbles, stippling, and directional stippling. In the Lovely Landscape Quilts book, Cathy states that "simple stipple or meander adds texture and is often more appropriate for landscape quilts, versus fans, feathers or geometric circular motifs." Yeah - no need to get fancy here!

So now I'm off to stipple and pebble. More stitching talk later this week.

Happy Quilting!

April 2017 Book of the Month

Being that I'm in the middle of quilting my pictorial quilt, Santorini, I've chosen to continue with Lovely Landscape Quilts (affiliate link) by Cathy Geier for the April 2017 Book of the Month.

I own several landscape quilt books, yet none of them talks about the quilting of the piece. In Cathy's book, she not only shows you how to design a landscape quilt, she gives instructions on prepping the quilt, the quilting itself, and adding extra details - one of the more thorough books I've run across. 

Who knows - when I'm done with Santorini, maybe there will be another landscape quilt in my future!

Happy Quilting!

Santorini - Landscape Quilting Part 1

Progress is happening in Santorini! Well, not the actual city, but my picture of it.

It now has a frame of charcoal grey, setting off the picture nicely. The very outer, lighter fabric is the background folded over the extra batting, so I have something less linty to hold on to.

On Wednesday, I showed the zigzag stitching of clear poly thread holding down the edges of the appliques.

This was one of the many quilting tips I learned in the Lovely Landscape Quilts book by Cathy Geier,

though she does this step after fusing the top to just the batting. I did a zigzag test piece of fabric and batting, and decided I didn't like the added dimension of a channel of zigzags, and straight line stitching wasn't going to hold the edge. So instead, armed with a 1.5 length/1.5 width zigzag stitch, clear poly, a 8/60 needle, the appliques were secured to just the muslin they're fused to. 

During this stage, she also does some thread painting. Again, I opted to do that once the batting and backing were on, because I wasn't sure just how heavily quilted this would be. Though without backing, it would be a great opportunity to hide ugly stitching or stitching buildup, don't you think? I may regret skipping this step later!

Once the edges were all tacking down, I spray basted the top to the batting and backing. Cathy uses fusible web to securely bond the top to the batting, and much less fusible to apply the backing. I didn't want that kind of permanence, nor did I want more fusible buildup. Spray basting was the way to go for me!

In a nutshell, Cathy's initial landscape quilting steps are:
1. Fuse the top to batting.
2. Stitch down raw edges/appliques.
3. Add some thread painting.
4. Lightly fuse on backing.

What did I do?
1. Stitched down raw edges/appliques.
2. Spray basted top to batting and backing.

So much for following directions! But I will say it was extremely helpful to read how she goes about prepping and quilting her landscape quilts. I am no expert when it comes to this genre, so any and all information is helpful.

As with every quilting project, it's important to seek guidance on how to approach the project, to make test pieces, and to form one's own path to completion. I'm doing what works for me and my project!

Until the next Santorini landscape quilting installment, 
Happy Quilting!

March 2017 Book of the Month

A day late, due to Midweek Makers, but not forgotten - it's time for a new Book of the Month selection! This month's honor goes to Lovely Landscape Quilts (affiliate link) by Cathy Geier.

Now before you get all excited, I have to admit I don't have plans to stitch a landscape quilt. Instead, I need to finish a landscape/art quilt. Remember this?

Yep, it's time Santorini gets quilted. 

So why the landscape book? Because of the nine landscape/art books I have, all gloss over the quilting part of the work. Essentially they say, 'stitch around defined areas' (leaves, flowers, etc), or 'add texture' to water, trees, mountains, etc. Or the dreaded 'stitch as desired.' Well, that's helpful.

Since I don't do a lot of landscape/art work, I need a bit more specific direction on the quilting portion. Hoping to find other landscape books that could help, I headed to the library and found the Lovely Landscape Quilts (affiliate link) book. Cathy has 10 pages devoted to quilting and finishing quilts, with the direction I'm looking for. Now to soak up her suggestions and put the ideas to stitches.
Wish me luck!