Quilting the Civil War Bride

The quilting continues on the Civil War Bride. I have all of the applique in the ditch quilting completed and I am working on the back ground quilting. I am using YLI invisible thread on the front and aurifil thread in the bobbin, the invisible thread is a little shiny from the flash in some of the pictures. The batting is wool. I am up to the fun part of the quilting. I draw motifs on a thin tissue paper (with a pigma pen - not a pencil - the needle would drag the lead onto the quilt)
and then lay it on the quilt, quilt thru it

and tear the paper away. The flowers in applique lend themselves to all sorts of little natural add on creatures:

A little hummingbird,

a spiderweb,

dragonfly,

snail,

and my very favorite, a peacock feather (don't you just know the bird of paradise has been loosing feathers).

After I have added all of the motifs I want, I will stipple quilt around them and the remaining background of the applique blocks.

I have stressed a little bit about the background quilting. I know some think that stipple quilting is overused, but it is what I do well. I think interspersing the motifs gives it a little interest.

Other than the center top, I am not adding any motifs to the borders, and simply quilting diagonal lines. To stabilize the border I have already marked 45 degree lines with a herra marker

and quilted every two inches.

This is walking foot work, lots of starts and stops and bridging over appliques and then going back and trimming away the thread bridges. I will go back and fill in additional lines (about every 3/8 of an inch) after the center quilting is completed.

I wanted to get brave and add a little inking to my quilt, like you see in the classic album quilts. I sort of chickened out and did ink FAITH, HOPE, and LOVE, but then I put black thread in the machine and sort of quilted/embroidered over it. I also did my initials and the year in the header pictures of this post.

And now I should put the laptop computer away, turn off the sewing machine, and get outside in this beautiful spring day and help my DH with yard chores.


Happy Stitching All,

Cheri