This quilt is a pattern by Judy Neimeyer that is no longer in print. I originally bought the patter to try out her patterns before I jumped into a big one. After working with it I don’t think anyone writes a more precise pattern with more detailed instructions.
I made this quilt from only 3 hand dyed fabrics. On the back I have part of the Warkton Lane Gradient that was used for all of the background and many of the spikes. I dyed a coordinating orange and pale mottled fabric for the sashing and other spike elements.
This quilt has been a long time in the making. It was pieced over 2 years ago. When I bought my Innova in 2014 this was one of the first quilts I started quilting. I stitched in the ditch the whole thing and did this quilting in the pale spikes and the quilting in the orange spikes. Then I hit an idea wall and took it off the machine for over a year.
When I put it back on the machine a couple of months ago I still didn’t have a good plan. I kept trying to plan some places to add feathers but couldn’t come up with anything that I liked a lot.
One of the design elements that bugged me in this quilt was this kite shape in the corner. It wasn’t repeated anywhere so the first thing I did was add several kits in the quilting. They are all cross-hatched. By the time I finished the kits I had given up on adding feathers. Once I let go of the feathers the rest of the quilting moved along quickly.
Here’s another kite shape hiding in the quilting. In both of those photos you can see how I highlighted the curved corners with swirled pebbles in lighter value thread.
Here’s a close up of the quilting in the center of the quilt. I use Crayola Washable Markers to mark my quilting lines. They wash right out when I wash the quilt for blocking.
I finished it off with a piped binding. This was the first time I’ve done a piped binding. It absolutely adds time but it’s not particularly difficult to do and well worth the effect.
