QAWM : Yellow Bird

We interrupt our regular QAWM for a blast from the past. This fused quilt is from around 2000 (?), and is one of my former patterns, which I used to sell to my students. The original was made when I was working at Quilting By The Lake, so that had to be eons ago. That one sold and I made this second one (better, methinks) and then made the pattern from it. I show it here for several reasons:

1. The background is black, something I mentioned that I never do. OK, so I rarely use black, but I have, obviously.
2. I used a lot of metallic threads in the quilting, and outlining. Mostly the threads I used were Sulky Sliver, a thin, flat ribbon-like polyester film that is metalized with aluminum to make it brilliantly reflective. It doesn't behave in many machines, but mine at the time (Janome 7500) could make it work. I used two other heavier gold threads/ribbon, both of them were couched onto the surface, meaning zigzagged over with YLI invisible nylon thread. I was lucky that invisible nylon worked in my machine and yet when I was teaching, my students had a dickens of a time with any other brand. Too bad, but the effect was so Laurel Burch, which was my aim. This was before Laurel Burch got into quilting.

  3. The dense quilting in the border was the only other quilting on the piece, since the couching and outlining were enough for the main part. I was often asked how the closely quilted border did not distort the rest of the lightly quilted piece, and my answer was that fusing made all the difference, because it was all fused down tight. Now I do detect there was a tiny bit o'wiggle in the tree there...but not too bad. At least the edges didn't ripple.

4. The binding was also fused. A narrow strip, prefused, and about 1.25" wide was finger pinched in half so it enclosed the edge, fused in place and top stitched using a built in decorative stitch. I kinda like this finish. So fast, and even the corners were mitered.

FYI, I only use Wonder Under #805. Ever.

And now back to piecing.