More fun with Quilting Vintage

I was blessed to be asked to quilt a beautiful hand pieced Dresden Plate quilt made by my client for her granddaughter as a graduation gift. The top was pieced with vintage fabrics and appliqued onto muslin, giving it a vintage feel despite being recently made for this special occasion.

Grace was worried that the piecing of the blocks with their sashings were not all quite uniform. I went to work thinking about how I could use the quilting to bring the focus to her beautiful Dresden Plates. As I got the quilt sandwiched and ready for quilting, I decided to work on outlining the plates first, adding crosshatching in their centers. Next I looked through my collection of quilting stencils and found one that I was pretty sure would work. If placed on point to fill the space over the intersections of the blocks, it would disguise any anomalies and give a nice flow to the overall look of the quilt.

Again, adding echoes to the stencil design instead of echoing the actual plates, some of which had less rounded petals than others, drew the eye away from any inconsistencies and created a beautiful design.

As always, the look from the back is so striking, especially when quilted with a solid backing that showcases the quilting. This particular quilt was so fun to watch take shape from the back!

The final touch was to add swirls and feathers in the inner and outer borders. At her request, after I completed the quilting, I also trimmed the quilt and machine stitched the binding on for Grace, so all she had to do to finish was the hand stitching of the binding to the back before leaving for her granddaughter's graduation. Grace was overjoyed with the results!

Thank you for trusting me to come up with a quilting design that would highlight this beautiful quilt!

More snippets from the sewing room soon,
Liz