Into the Light

Coming out of hibernation with a new landscape quilt, I just realized it has no title. And no sleeve. Oh well, maybe next week. :)

The stitching is as usual free motion, organically following the lines of each element on the quilt. This project was inspired by a yard of a Hoffman batik--which absolutely begged to be both sea and sky:

The lighthouse and cliff came from a panel from the "Wind and Waves" collection by Wilmington Fabrics. I was less than enamored of/with the original sky and water, so away it went into the scrap drawer.



The trees behind the house were pretty sparse and undefined in the panel, and after cutting away the sky, there really needed to be more of them. A search through my fat quarters turned up only one fabric that depicted evergreens in the proper scale for that part of the scene. They were fussy cut after hand-pressing onto Steam-a-Seam Lite 2, then fused to the quilt top.

Funny thing, a few months back I had almost relegated these trees to the Christmas fabric stash, after deciding they looked a bit too 'cartoony' for a landscape quilt. Glad I didn't, or I'd never have found them! They worked perfectly, even picking up the gold cast in the sky. You just never know.



The ship is a favorite element of mine, one I've used before in a quilt called The Tower. It came from a $2.00 pair of curtains picked up at a local Goodwill Store. Lots more ships to go!









The ocean waves were cut from this wonderful Robert Kaufman fabric, which is yardage I try to keep on hand and have used in a previous quilt, titled The View from Merlin's Cave (see the cover photo on the Linda's Landscapes page on Facebook).






The moon was cut from this gorgeous Stonehenge fabric by Northcott Mills, and overshadowed by blue-green tulle.














The moonlit path on the ocean was stitched with Sulky's Holoshimmer, my favorite thread for highlighting water. Silver was used on the background water, dark pewter on the foreground.

The seafoam at the water's edge is a scrap of polyester batting, stitched down with a wide-spaced stipple and a size 11 topstitch needle to prevent obvious holes (all other quilting was done with a size 14 topstitch needle). Note: in my test sample, the free-motion disc foot smashed the batting flat. Figuring the little circular metal free-motion foot wouldn't skim over the fluffy batting, I opted for no foot at all. Needless to say, I was concerned about keeping my fingers away from the needle. That's when the bicycle clip idea came in handy again. (See the blog post titled Everything Plus the Girl.)

The three different rock fabrics were quilted as they were, with no embellishment except for the black tulle used to shade the foreground. (That's rare for me; on rocks, I usually go crazy with paint markers.)

Probably the first lighthouse ever to have emergency surgery.

There was only one serious issue. Because the sky was quilted horizontally, the lighthouse (being tall and vertical) developed some horizontal saggy areas. Ever seen a puckered lighthouse? Not a pretty sight.

Since I hadn't planned on quilting it--nor would that have solved the problem, as it was backed with fusible web, keeping it pretty stiff--I had to stuff it. You can kind of tell in this photo. I had never tried trapunto from the back, which I understand is the original method. The backing fabric, batting and background fabric were carefully slit with a sharp seam ripper, allowing me to poke polyester fill under the lighthouse fabric as far as it could go at both ends. Then the slit was 'Fray-Checked' and stitched closed.

When blocking the quilt, I was careful to avoid that area.

Hooking up here with Leah Day's FMQ Project linkup -- the last one, by the way, as she's doing the linkups differently from now on. Also linking in to Sarah Craig's Whoop Whoop Friday blog. Do yourself a favor and check out these two blogs, along with their reader hookups. Lots of inspiration to take you into your weekend!

And on that note, have a great one~~

Linda