Traditional Round Robin Quilted

Time flies. This round-robin quilt was started in May of 2012 (blogged here) by some members of the Sunshine online quilt guild. I received it back around August or September. It lay waiting for me to improve my machine quilting. I had done meandering in the past fairly successfully on a different sewing machine but was having trouble getting a good stitch now on my Featherweight.

Last summer I took a class with Barbara Schapel on Free Motion Quilting fillers. And I’ve been browsing Leah Day’s Free Motion Project as well as taking a couple of her classes on Craftsy.I have a stack of charity quilts to practice on (my quilting is good enough to hold them together, and the kids don’t care about the pattern glitches).

Over a month ago, I was ready to start a binge of quilting. However, all of my tops were at least one or two inches wider than the width of fabric. Sigh. Pieced backs are “in,” but it does make an extra step. So the top was put away again.

Finally I pieced a back, and this weekend I quilted it. In the center I used Leah Day’s River Path.  If you aren’t familiar with her site, go look at all the fillers that she demonstrates.

(You’ll have to look at the half of the quilting that shows and Leah’s sample to get the idea of the design.  I took the photo at the same angle as others that show the quilting, but this is what I got.) The round-robin partners all had fabric to coordinate with the center moth print. Note the dragonflies to the side. And there are other butterflies coming up.

The first and fourth borders got Loopy Line–the dragonfly flight path in the print in the first border suggested it, and it seemed good to repeat it. Besides, it is fast.  The third border, with its distinct divisions, asked for a more blocky treatment, so I browsed some more and finally selected Rain Forest Leaf. Butterflies, dragonflies, and moths need leaves.
 I plan to bind it in navy, and I will post a photo of the whole quilt then.

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