Midnight Over the Oasis Quilt is finished!

I'm really glad that this quilt along came along.
This little wall quilt has been so much fun and was fairly easy to make. 
I fell in love with Jen Kingwell's pattern "Midnight Over the Oasis" purchased the pattern and started my first quilt along. 
I've finished my first Quilt Along!


The Elven Garden was an awesome host for this quilt along.


I chose fabrics from my stash, many of these were found on the online shelves of Mad About Patchwork.


I really enjoyed the process of hand sewing the triangles together.



I posted about my hand sewing of the triangles in the corner blocks. I could have machine sewed them, but really wanted to give my hand sewing fingers a good work over. If you are like me, and do a tonne of hand work, then keeping the fingers nimble is essential.

You see the plaid  blue print in the center, this was a beloved plaid blue from an older shirt I found at the local transfer station Free Shed. But I didn't really count on that fabric stretching out so much, you'll see later on the strategy I used to machine quilt  the center piece.




Then came the Orange Peel inner border. I did all sorts of fun hand embroidery in a free from fashion and machine applique techniques to give the Orange Peel more depth.

The flower applique border is so exciting, twirling and whirling like a vine. This proved to be a lot of fun and  I learned some new tricks to making an Orange Peel block!

The bright green leaves in the flower border were just left over green large rick rack and cut apart. I appliqued these down too with machine blanket stitch. I just can't seem to give up on recycling as much as I can into a design. But as you'll soon learn, the brilliance of recycling pays off big sometimes. You just got to give a try and carry on.



Then I progressed to the outer border and this is where I deviated from Jen's pattern. I really saw a chevron border way back when I started. I love making improv Chevron's and will post a new tutorial on that too coming up. I've got a pile of UFO's and I'm feeling good. 

You can't keep a quilter with a purpose down for long!

Now to the machine quilting. It got complicated as soon as I tried to sandwich this puppy. (Part of me knew this all along and didn't want to deal with it, truth be told)

The center square proved quite a challenge and finally, I decided the square was just too frumpy and baggy, so I decided to elevate the whole center block by adding in layers of extra batting. in short, this Free Shed shirt became a real winner when it bounced up "trapunto style" I guessed the amount of extra loft of course!

Bits and pieces went into this trapunto center.



I actually sprayed fixative underneath both layers and called it a day with a second layer in the center only.

Then this was the fabulous result! I loved it and all this time, I was worrying about how it would turn out after using my beloved blue plaid. I did a varied wavy stitch with FMQ around the outside of the green center. Then decided that was just the right way to deal with the rest of this heavy block. 

I think it turned out really well, considering if I'd stayed with conventional thinking, I might have this one still in a bin!



I just love this look, its way more impressive in person.


As I moved out towards the edge of this quilt, I just kept the machine quilting to a minimum. In each sashing, just one thin wavy line of quilting.





Connie Reskin is a blogger extraordinaire! Her blog is impressive and I'm thrilled to link up and show off one of my UFO's for this list.

Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River

Have fun ladies and gents who follow me and thank you Connie for hosting this Linky Party!


Happy Quilting

Caroline










Comments

  1. Fascinating - and how very innovative to make the center 'puffy' to accommodate that stretchy fabric!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow! It is an absolute showstopper! I think the chevron border is the perfect finishing touch and it just makes the rest of the quilt shine! I'm looking forward to your tutorial on how you made it!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Karen and Peg, its a really versatile pattern. You can mix and match your own version of things into the various borders, basically its a madalion quilt that you can make your own. I totally enjoyed this pattern.

    ReplyDelete

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