The Guild I attend (Kempenfelt Quilt Guild) is a very generous Guild

indeed. Throughout the year, The Guild creates and donates at least

3-4 quilts to local charities. This year, I had the privilege to be asked

to quilt this one.

I consider it a “modern” quilt because it has no border,no sashing,

lots of solid bright colors, and lots of open negative space.

Here is a side view of it on my frame. There is one spot that hasn’t been

quilted yet. I wanted to give you an idea of what we longarmers face when

we put a quilt on the frame.  We have to be able to “see” what the

stitching will look like even before we put one stitch into the top.

When I first received the quilt, I had no idea of what to do with it.

But as usual, I went to the Net and found inspiration at Murdock Manor.

Janet Murdock  had quilted this quilt. And yes, I did email her

and ask for her permission to use this quilting design.

How can you not like this quilt? I love the texture that the quilting

brings to the whole thing. I am quickly learning that I am becoming a

texture junkie. So, with this idea in mind, I began to quilt this top.

The name of the stitching is called “Matchsticks and Pebbles.”

Not quite original but it does describe the stitching to a tee.

The matchsticks took a long time to stitch out but the pebbles were

alot quicker. Because the background was white (and I have overhead lights

with my frame) there was a really bad glare coming off the quilt top.

After the first day,  I noticed that I was getting a headache. So, the next

day, I turned the lights off and wore sunglasses while I quilted. Yes, it

was quite the sight.

When my kids came home from school, they thought that their mother

had lost it totally. It worked though-no more headaches or glare.

It took me 10 hours to quilt and I used a white polyester thread for the

top and the backing.

The backing does show the stitching nicely.

The colors of the solid bars did show through to the backing. After all the stitching

was done on the white background, I went back and stitched around the bars

with a monofilament thread on the top. This helped so that I didn’t have to

change threads for each of  the different colored bars.

I have to mention too, that when I was deciding on which way to quilt the

diagonal matchsticks. turning off the lights did help me see where I was going.

Sometimes you have got to get creative in order to finish a quilt.

Have a great week.