Hen House Quilt Rescue

I often find myself questioning my quilting style because I draw inspiration from a diverse range of quilts that come into the studio—paper-pieced Quiltworx creations, ultra-modern designs, traditional piecework, and improv art quilts. This variety is what makes my job as a longarm quilter so exciting.  The quilt I'm writing about this week caught my fancy even though I don't think I would ever make it myself. 

A woman brought in this quilt that she'd received as a gift. While it had already been quilted, we both felt it needed a little more to transform it into a wall-worthy art piece. Unable to modify the quilt's borders without a major redesign, so I focused on enhancing the blocks through some expert longarm quilting.

Here is what the quilt looked like before.

I concentrated on adding texture and drama in the cream and off-white background fabrics.

I framed the blocks, creating distinct sections, and filled the backgrounds with various designs like pebbles, swirls, diagonal lines, crosshatches, and a playful chicken wire pattern.

Some chickens even got extra feathers. Don't miss the fox that snuck into the hen house!

Though I don't know the pattern name, I fell in love with these quirky chickens, and I believe my efforts were not in vain. This quilt was undoubtedly worth the extra longarm quilting to bring it to the next level.

It was challenging working on this quilt when I couldn't add a lot of tension because it was already bound.  But by concentrating on the interior blocks I was able to keep the quilt relatively flat.  I didn't add any extra quilting to the outside border or on the extra large binding.  This technique can be done on any quilt that has a big enough border where you can still use your clamps a bit, but don't expect to get perfect results, I had some tucks and places where the fabric was fuller, but I think the final results were worth the trade. 

I decided to quilt it on my bigger machine because the Avante needed some servicing. 

Maybe I will make a chicken quilt one day, these quirky chickens did make me smile.