Swan Quilt

Hi!  I'd like to introduce you to "Buttercup"....she's a lovely swan I had the pleasure of quilting! 

This quilt was designed by Sarah Overton for Bonnie Christine's fabric line, "Hello Ollie" and was on display in her booth at quilt market over the summer.   Here she is on display :)

Buttercup Quilt

When Sarah first sent me the design for the quilt top, I was excited about the negative space I'd have to play in! 

I went to work on my iPad, thinking up quilting options.  When I started doodling, my first thought was to frame the swan.  This helps break up the negative space and emphasize the main focus.  To do it, I had drawn the box how I wanted on the iPad, so when I got the quilt top, I used my blue water soluble marker to draw a box on the quilt before loading, trying to match up the same points as in my picture. 

Next, in my doodling, I started drawing lines going out from the box, and where you have lines you must have ribbon candy, right?! 

Naturally.  I used my 1/2" echo foot along with my Handi Quilter Versa-Tool ruler to give me nice evenly spaced lines without having to measure/mark. 

For the inside of the frame, I came across this design on Instagram and just thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen! 

I knew it would be the perfect "showstopper" fill I wanted.  The instructions I found came from here.   To do it, I measured across one side of the frame, then divided that length up equally.  Then, I marked the boxes all the way across, and just filled them in one at a time.  For the corners, I made them into 2 triangles.  That's the great thing about that design, it works for squares, rectangles, triangles, anything!  Whatever kind of shape you end up with, you can fill it and it just adds more texture.  Can't go wrong!  You can see my boxes, if you divide the "fan" in half - from half of one to half of the other, that was one box.  It took awhile, but the results were totally worth it! 

I also wanted to double up the batting to really show the quilting and I just love how puffy it makes everything! 

My go-to is Hobbs 80/20 on the bottom, and Hobbs Tuscany 100% wool on top.  It's so much fun to quilt on. 

As for the swan, it was time to let the Pro-Stitcher do some fancy work :) I had used this design before and just love how soft and feminine it looks.  Perfect!  I used the "multi-point" function to create my area which was the outline of the swan, then laid my design over top and simply cropped away the outside.  Here's what it looked like on my screen:

And here's the finished swan - it looks like soft, little pillows to me :)

And of course she needed nice swirls all around, like she's swimming on the water.  Then it was off the frame and on to market!  

She was really such a pleasure to work on. 

It's so fun seeing your ideas come to life!  I'm grateful to spend my days creating and doing what I love. 
If you have any questions or comments, please leave me a note below!  Thanks for reading :)

Andrea