Atlantis Quilt Custom Quilting

My good friend and fellow longarmer, Jason (Kingfisher Craft Company) referred his client to me for some hand-guided custom quilting on a fabulous Atlantis quilt designed by South Wind Designs.  The brief was deceptively simple, the maker wanted minimal quilting on the piecework and for me to keep the folded 3D elements intact.  "Sure!" I said confidently over the email, "No problem, send it my way".  I was in for a doozie.  You can check out the videos here: 

LONG VERSION Atlantis Quilt  (1 hour 42 minutes) 

Regular Version (17 minutes)

The thing is, I work on big complicated quilts a lot, and I was confident. I had quilted many quilts with folded piecework, but none to the degree of this.  Before I get too into my process here I want to disclose the fact that this quilt and I did not get along and I forgot to take a lot of photos. 

I honestly don't even have any notes written down! But this quilt is mounted on my 12-foot frame so it's fair to say it was a biggie.  When I started looking at the quilt I realized that I was going to have a harder time than I anticipated to try and make all of these blocks look like they belonged together.   

Because the background of the blocks and the sashing were the same fabric it appeared that the folded elements were sort of floating, but I couldn't have that since I was trying to keep my quilting to a minimum. 

So I decided to use this framing technique to separate the blocks from the sashing and give the blocks a similar feel even though they were all so different from one another.  Having the frame behind the piecework also allows the blocks to keep 'floating'. 

I needed to pick a shape to help me keep the blocks cohesive too, so I decided to go with the shape of the attic window-type folds.  My Quilted Pineapple BFF ruler was the perfect curve to help make this happen.  I also used a 2.5" round ruler and a 4" round ruler.

Spending all of that time and ruler work on the blocks and ultimately the borders too, I needed a quick and efficient way to quilt the sashing.  Feathers seemed the natural fit. When I do feathers in the sashing I love to do this wavy half feather because you can stitch the spine fairly seamlessly without too much added thread bulk.  I draw a spine using my water-soluble marker around every other block to give the impression of flowing feathers, even though they are just going in a loop. 

I think the reason I struggled so much with this quilt is that I had to constantly be looking and feeling for the folds so as not to stitch under one and jam up my foot.  I also had my fingers closer to the needle than I usually like (don't want to stitch through a finger again!).  Ultimately I did reach the end and both the maker and I were happy with the results.   But I'll be fine if I never have to quilt one of these again!

 I have been working slowly on some projects during my limited downtime.  Most of my projects of late have been from hand-me-down stuff... I am finishing a log cabin quilt that someone pieced 9 blocks for, I am trying to add at least 6 more, sort of finished my very first quilt coat from a found quilt top, I always have an ugly Christmas scraptastic thing on the go.  I hope to finish a fancy quilt coat for Quilt Canada (fingers crossed on this one!), and I am casually piecing a modified temperature quilt.... okay I think I should sit down and look at some of the things I have going on! 

Well, I should go and find something to stitch before my eyes go crossed from staring at this screen!  Thanks for reading and watching and I will catch you next time 😄.