Growing up, during the summer vacation, you could almost always find me and my family at our small cottage on the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. The lake and the adjacent pond provided endless adventures looking for all kinds of pond critters. As time passed, my siblings had kids of their own who would take up the mantle of exploring everything the pond had to offer during their visits. One summer, my nephew, who was maybe not even 10 at the time, proudly approached the camp with a giant frog in his hand, declaring, 'Look, this is my Aunt Phibian!'
My mom, who was probably busy making a crowd-sized dinner, was somewhat less than thrilled with the introduction of the new 'family' member.
These days, a third generation of youngsters--my great nephews--had their first introduction to the wonders of the pond and its critters last summer.
When I saw this panel on sale at one of the local quilt shops, I bought it and set it aside to wait for inspiration.
A few weeks ago, inspiration arrived in the form of a variation on the Big Day Quilt project connected to the AfterFLOCK blocks.
I made some adjustments to one of the block patterns and rotated the block to make the panel pieces, featuring various pond critters, 'dance' on the quilt
Each block featured the pond critter panel element, directional fish fabric that has been languishing in my stash forever, and a light-colored coordinate, the only coordinate from the panel fabric line still left at the shop.
The piecing was easy enough, except for that directional fish print that required a bit of backwards sewing once or twice.
The quilt strategy involved ditch-stitching around all the block borders and around the critter panel segment. The free motion fill for the two main block elements included curvy squiggles for the fish (ti mimic water), and an easy innie-outie shape meander. I do my own quilting using my domestic machine, so I like to keep the quilt pattern fluid and easy.
The spotty border (originally part of a longhorn cattle-themed fabric group, was just as easy. A squiggly corduroy-like series of radiating lines encircling the outer edge of the quilt.
Everything went smoothly, except -
What to do with those 5" square motifs? I suppose I could have left them unquilted. They'd be fine. But with so much dense quilting nearby, I wondered if these would puff and eventually tear with multiple washings.
I could have added a different fill or straight lines to secure this area, but instead I opted to add a double line of curvy seams . . .
. . . Then I added a second round of double curvy quilting lines.
Just enough to stabilize the motif without adding too much fuss.
You may have noticed that I tend to like to add a little squiggle to free motions lines. The border 'corduroy' could just as easily have been up-and-down straight-ish lines of quilting. But adding the squiggle takes a lot of the pressure off making repeated 'straight' lines. If a squiggle is off a bit, who would know? If a straight line is off, it might show a little more.
Same thing with the fish fabric fill. A little squiggle adds the 'feel' of water. Some of those horizontal spaces within the block are quite long. If I had chosen to make those long straight lines, chances are a squiggle would have entered into the process whether or not I wanted it to.
Anyway, of the twenty block motifs, half are done. Once the remaining motifs are done, I'm ready to trim, bind, and label.
Then my grand nephews can start counting Aunt Phibians on the quilt.
Happy Stitching!
Head Hummingbird
Hummingbird-Highway.com
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