I’m becoming a bit of an over-achiever when it comes to quilts. I go to make a quilt for a special occasion, for example a wedding, and end up making a mammoth quilt that’s big enough for a whole community! This next quilt was supposed to be a baby quilt. Emphasis on the word baby. Turns out, it’s more single bed sized. Oh well, at least it will be useful for a long…. long time.
The pattern Whale Tale is from Sew Kind of Wonderful – using their QCR Mini ruler. It’s very quick and easy to put together, however absolutely look at the errata page on their website as there was quite a few bits missing. I actually was a little bit annoyed by that, as it didn’t seem to have been very thoroughly proofread at all. I offer my services as technical editor if needed.
Spotlight Australia had a lovely selection of whale/ocean quilting cottons that I dove into for the water part of this quilt – I wanted lots of colour and detail for Theo to play eye-spy with later on. Several layers of this ocean were all directional prints, so I had to be very careful when cutting to make sure that I kept it all upright. Especially the world map layer, that would have looked rather odd to suddenly have Australia upside down.
You can get a good idea of the quilting design I used for this quilt with these beautiful pictures. I get lovely side-light/texture in the late afternoon. The pantograph used was called “Seafoam” from Urban Elementz.
The white fabric across the top half of the quilt was a poor choice, I should have done a pale blue or something cloudy/mottled. I thought it would be cute to use a white on white star print, but all I can think of now is how annoying it will be for keeping clean. Live and learn I guess, although I’m not sure I’d make this quilt again. I quilted it in a very pale aqua thread, to keep a bit of interest in the sky and blend better with the ocean layers.
Because of the way the quilt is designed, there were actually a few quarter circle block pieces left over, so I used them to make a “globe” for framing the quilt label. It really helped it to stand out on the back. Which was a beautiful plaid flannel, so it is hopefully warm and hard wearing.
My new favourite foot for attaching binding is a quarter inch top stitching foot. It has a solid fence for lining up the quilt edge, and it makes it a quick and relatively painless job. I love a bias stripe for a binding, this one is actually supposed to be a road, but it works just as well for framing an ocean.
I love how the quilting shows up on the charcoal of the whale, almost like some sort of tribal art.
Have you ever been disappointed in a pattern? Was it poorly written, missing instructions or just unclear? What did you do – if anything?
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