Saturday, April 25, 2020

Bubble Up Lap Quilt in the making

It's almost done! I've been wanting to make another lap quilt for our love seats in our living room to keep Chevy cosy and the seats relatively dog hair free.

Bubble Up Lap Quilt - Where two spirals meet

Bubble Up fabric strips
Bubble Up fabric strips
The day that I heard that Quilty Pleasures, our local quilt shop, was not an essential service, and would have to close to customer traffic, I rushed out and supported the shop 😊 Among my purchases was a package of Bubble Up fabric strips. Enough to make one lap quilt!

I didn't get fancy, I just sewed all of the strips together. The fabric is so colourful and amazing that I didn't want to mess with it (that's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

It took me a while to figure out how to quilt it since the fabric was too busy, colourful and amazing. It wouldn't have been worth doing any fancy free motion quilting (FMQ). So I didn't.


Quilting spirals using the walking foot
Quilting spirals using my walking foot
In the meantime, I've been watching some excellent BluPrint (Craftsy) classes. I never used to watch them unless I was going to start doing the work, but in the last couple of months, I'm just watching them for entertainment. That way I can view many and just follow the ones that I want.

I started by watching the first of Jacquie Gering's walking foot courses, Creative Quilting With Your Walking Foot. I then watched her second course, Next Steps With Your Walking Foot. Jacquie is a really excellent teacher and her courses are interesting and instructive. I highly recommend them!

So how to quilt my Bubble Up Lap Quilt - with a walking foot using spirals. I learned so much from watching the courses and quilting this piece.

I'll be mentioning what I learned below but I did want to talk about the constructive interference that I experienced when these two spirals met. If you look at the picture, you will probably start to cringe!
Constructive interference -
when two spirals meet
Yup, you guessed it!

It looks like my quilt top wasn't quite taunt enough and trouble was coming. Anyway, I wasn't in any mood to remove any of the stitching, so I forged ahead. Yup, my quilt has some lovely pleats where the two spirals met. At that point, Better Done Than Perfect was my mantra. If you examine it closely, you can see the lovely pleats, but otherwise they are quite inconspicuous.😊

I looked in my stash for fabric to bind the quilt but really, none of it was up to these amazing colours - so I just had to find an online store in Canada that had some Bubble Up fabric. My fabric is coming to me from East Coast Quilt Co, in St. John's, Newfoundland. If I can't travel, at least my fabric can!

Since it was a beautiful day, I went out with my son and Chevy for a photo shoot to a deserted park down the street.


Bubble Up - where two spirals meet
quilt and dog
Fun with Chevy

There's a lot going on in that quilt!

Bubble Up Quilt
basking in the sun
See the flowers blooming - oh, and there's the quilt!
















What I learned
  • As you know, I love free motion quilting (FMQ) but since I've been using my walking foot to make journal covers, I've come to appreciate it. I thought that it would be good to try out quilting with the walking foot on this quilt.
  • Jacquie Gering warned us that quilting spirals with the walking foot could be tricky. It is! The hardest thing to master, in my opinion, is turning the quilt around while not leaving a trace on the quilting. I have quite a few tiny bumps in the quilting. I'm sure that if I had been in a more zen mood that it would have gotten better earlier in the quilting. I was getting the hang of it by the end.
  • I used a colourful variegated King Tut thread for the top of the quilt - and I wasn't sure that I would have enough. I'm happy to report that I did, although I don't think that there's much left on the spool.
  • I love the secondary pattern that comes from the two spirals intersecting. 
  • I'm really looking forward to binding the quilt when my fabric arrives. Of course, I'll post it when it's finished! 
Related links
Linking parties
I will be linking up to many fun linky parties, including Free Motion Mavericks which is with Muv this week. Make sure that you go link up - it's not only about FMQ!
I'm also linking up with Sandra's DrEAMi quilt party, as well as many other fun linking parties. Let's check them out and see what's going on while we stay home and quilt! Peacock Party, Friday Foto Fun, Can I Get A Whoop Whoop?, Tuesday Colour and Inspiration, What I Made Monday, Monday Making,


12 comments:

  1. Ack!! Don't you just hate it when that happens? In the end, all I see is that lovely spiral-y texture!! Besides that, perfection is overrated.

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    1. Thanks! I totally agree with all of it. I hope that I'll learn from this - that's the best that I can do.

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  2. Lovely quilt, and your spirals are great! Only you will notice if there is a pleat between the two ;)

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  3. Merci Frédérique - you are quite correct, and it's too beautiful to not love!

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  4. Your quilt looks fab. I love those fabrics and your quilting adds a lovely texture without distracting from the colours. Lucky you dashed out in time to buy it :)

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  5. It looks fabulous, although I know I how I would feel. You did great, and almost no one will know (except a few quilting friends and we won't tell).

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  6. I love a good spiral quilting motif but a double one? Gotta try this! That’s so annoying but only you will ever know and I bet with washing it will crinkle you and not show much at all. I love King Tut thread. Thanks for linking up with DrEAMi!

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  7. That is wonderful fabric, and I love the quilt you made with it! We would never know from your finished photos that the constructive interference even happened!

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  8. So pretty. And perfection disappears into a quilt anyway, it becomes about comfort of the physical and sentimental kind once its in use. I love the intersection of the spiral quilting, even if it didn't go 100% to plan. But, since when is a quilting store not an essential service.....?! :) Thanks for linking to the Chameleon's Colour & Inspiration party.

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  9. Hello Andrée, love your quilt. Gosh, that was quick! you are this week's featured project!
    Love, Muv

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Hi! I would love to hear from you and I will try to answer you. Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a message. :-)