A flock of geese - a finished quilt-

And at last I have a finished quilt to share with you. It's going to be a picture post with lots and lots of images. And here first of all the quilt in all its beauty.

You might recall that I used wool wadding for the first time for this quilt. I was really taken aback by how much loft this batting has compared to my usual cotton batting. I do like a relatively thick wadding and use Hobbs Heirloom which is roughly as thick as the Quilter Dream Select weight. The difference between the wool and cotton batting is that cotton has almost no loft and sort of feels more substantial.

Because of the higher loft I felt I could not quilt the quilt as dense as I might have done otherwise which was a little disappointing. I originally wanted to do vertical lines 1.5 in apart and then add horizontals along the seam lines but ended up only doing the vertical lines.

I also felt that although I basted this quilt very well that the quilt top and back moved more through quilting than anticipated. This wasn't a problem as such as I chosen the backing and wadding large enough  but it surprised me. Overall I had to slow down during quilting as my machine would otherwise slip a stitch which is also something I hadn't had before (if you disregard the time when I hadn't cleaned my machine....let's not talk about that).

I quilted with a beige 28w Aurifill thread as I often do. Aurifill or Guetermann Sulky are my two favourite threads.

My backing fabric is a text print from Carrie Bloomsten's 'Paint' collection which I thought works really well with this quilt. The front has a varying colour palette of bright and sedate colours and I chose both fabrics for each flying geese block to compliment each other which I hope gives the quilt a coherent design.

The binding is a dotty red/white fabric that contrasts well with the backing and also with the quilt front and really makes me smile.

The wool adding gives the quilt an entire different feel and drape. Folded up like in the image above it is obvious how much loft this quilt really has and at first I wasn't too happy with this and almost regretted my choice  but I am slowly getting around the softer drape and feel of the quilt and am sure that when the winter comes that I appreciate it even more.

And to close a few numbers and statistics:

• 240 geese blocks @ 3" x 6" finished size makes 720 pieces of fabric stitched together

• I used the "no waste" method where you make 4 geese blocks out of one square as described in this tutorial. I chose the squares rather larger than suggested though because I always square them off with a ruler and used a bloc-loc ruler this time which really works a treat

• I used a very large selection of K. Fassett shot cottons, mattress ticking, gingham, moda cross weave and M. Dubrawski hand printed fabric

And this is it for the next 2 months or so. I am taking a summer break enjoying a bit more my photography and other non-quilting activities and will be back in the autumn.

Have a good one !