Wild Quilt Panel Quilt

My client Monette sent me this adorable woodland creatures panel quilt. I love the vibe of this quilt, it's sweet but not overly childish. The dusty colours are very calming and I think any little person receiving this quilt is going to be very lucky.  This fabric collection is "Wild" by Bethan Janie for Dashwood Studio.  If you do go looking for it, you might have a tough time as it was quite popular, good luck!

I spent quite a while trying to decide on thread colours.  When I quilt panel blocks like this I usually like to stick to a finer thread, but I adore these muted pastel colours and decided to have some fun with thread.

The only real issue with a quit like this from a custom longarm perspective is that there wasn't much negative space. Monette wanted the custom touch so I went for it.
For the outside framing blocks that act like a border, I decided to build a semi-structured border design that wrapped around the panel blocks.

My goal was to design for elegance of the fabrics and vibe of the panel. It's difficult to see the semi-circle arch feathers but they are there hahaha. I filled in the edging space with a blunt piano key because I was having a hard time seeing my stitches and a true piano key would have strained my eyes and given me a massive headache.  Here is a photo of the corner.

The panel animal blocks gave me a bit more visibility as the colours were lighter and a little less densely printed. I did a combination of free-motion quilting using feathers, concentric swirls, and flowers.
I kept the sashing simple with a ribbon candy design as the fabrics and panel were the focal point of this quilt.

I adore this quilt and enjoyed quilting it. Even if it was a bit of a challenge with visibility. I have a short YouTube video about working on visibly difficult quilts. It was my first video, just FYI, hahaha.

You can find that video here

Monette chose to use my favourite backing fabric (Fireside).  I love this fabric because it allows the quilting to show on the back.

I have been working like a crazy person trying to keep up with the studio, YouTube, and the family.  I have caught up on the quilts that were sent to me in 2023! Now I'm taking this week to do some work on my quilt course and hopefully get that out to the people who have been waiting so patiently for it.  

The course has morphed into this amazing 8-chapter beast!  Each chapter has 10-15 videos covering a ton of design ideas and a pile of inspiration to help you create truly unique designs.  I am almost done editing the videos and then I will be working on all of the diagrams, checklists and printouts. 

The course starts with a breakdown of rulers for beginners including safety and how to hold your rulers (including curved rulers).  We start with a basic piano key and build to ghost quilting.  Anyhow I should really get to it!  Thanks for reading!

Sam