Some hot air

I've decided to start a blog as a means to share some of my quilts.  I don't expect to be posting often, but I do hope to share a bit about each quilt I finish.

My most recent finish is a small wall hanging:

The design is based on a mini-flag I made last year for the "To Boston With Love" project coordinated by the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild:

I enlarged the applique design by 200% for the wall hanging, but I kept the background triangles at the same size, to help use up some scraps.  The border uses leftover strips as well.

 

 

I used a trapunto technique to add an extra layer of batting behind the applique pieces.  I tried a shortcut at this step, which did not work out as well as I would have liked.  I fused the shapes to the background, then layered a piece of batting underneath before stitching around the shapes with a blanket stitch.  I used a walking foot for this step, but the stitching turned out quite uneven, as you can see in this photo:

I hindsight, I think I would have been better off by doing the blanket stitches without the batting, then add the batting with either clear or water soluble thread.

To complete the trapunto effect, I trimmed the batting from the back, close to the stitches.  Then I sandwiched the top with a regular-sized piece of batting and a backing fabric, and did the quilting.

The "ropes" were machine stitched using Aurifil 12wt, after quilting the background.

A lot of the scraps in this small quilt are from a larger project which is almost completed.  I had hoped to have the larger quilt finished in time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, but since that isn't to be I decided to enter this one instead.