THE BRUSH STROKES QUILT 🐻

I bought the material for this Brush Strokes Quilt long before I bought my longarm, but once I finished piecing the top together I just couldn't envision giving it to a professional longarmer to quilt it.  "I" wanted to quilt this quilt with ruler work from top to bottom.  Me.  Just me and only me.  I just couldn't give my work over to someone else to quilt it.  Am I the only one who feels this way ... that if someone else quilts your top then that quilt is no longer just your work of art?  No, right? Because then it becomes your quilt AND some other stranger's quilt and I just couldn't do that.  This is the reason that there is a longarm sitting behind me as I type this blog and now my little works of art are all my very own!

I pieced this top back in May of 2018 and it has laid on my guest bed all this time waiting to be quilted.  First I had to convince myself to buy a longarm.  Then I had to wait till they delivered the longarm. Then I had to wait until they came and built the longarm. Then I had to teach myself to use the longarm.  And then I had to do some other quilts before I trusted myself to quilt this one on the longarm.  

This quilt stayed on my frame the longest of any of the quilts that I have done so far.  I didn't run into any difficulties while quilting this it was just a lot of slow and patient ruler work. Also, Christmas interrupted my quilting schedule and then I went and got the flu.  Ugh! The Christmas part was fun, the flu ... not so much.  

I left the brush strokes themselves unquilted and just stitched in the ditch around them so that they would pop.  I would have liked to use wool on top of the Quilter's Dream white polyester batting to have them pop even more but this quilt and its twin (that is sitting in the drawer waiting to be pieced) will get a lot of wear and tear and loving snuggles so I thought a single poly batt would be best so that it could be washed regularly. 

This quilt and its twin will be used on our blowup mattresses when little ones come to visit. We get lots of those little visits.  I'm also hoping that someday those little visitors will be my grandchildren since it was my grandchildren that I had in mind for these. Once I started piecing this first quilt I found robot sheets that went with it perfectly.  So, I ordered two sets.  

The rObOt sheets!

The second quilt will have a blue backing while this one has a very pretty light turquoise backing.  I'm not sure if I want to quilt the second one identical to the first one or do a whole different playful design. I won't know that until I get there, which is half the fun of quilting on the longarm!

The quilt on the blow up mattress with the robot sheets on.

This quilt is very modern and very geometric so I wanted to quilt it in all geometric shapes ... but in a playful way.  That's why I added a 4 1/2 inch white border to the pattern.  The original pattern stops at the colorful squares border, but I thought all those little colored squares would make a nice inner border.  

Before I added an additional outside border.

From the start I envisioned playful little balls dancing around the whole quilt. The rest of the quilting just kinda happened as I went and I'm happy with the way it turned out. I always love how differently a quilted top looks from the flat pieced top.  It just comes alive with the quilting!

I used a white Isacord 40 weight thread on the top and in the bobbin and a light blue Isacord thread through the colored squares on the inner border. Using a white thread meant that I had to cross those dark blue brush strokes and having that white thread show on that blue fabric. If you stitch directly in the ditch the thread sinks in and you barely see it. Stitching directly in the ditch each time is a perfection I haven't quite yet mastered but I did a pretty good job of it. 

Over the holidays I came across a discount code to use at dutchlabelshop.com for some labels to sew onto my quilts. You can design them however you like and they are very reasonable in price.  I was going to sew the label right into the binding and let it hang loose but I decided at the end to just sew it at an angle in the corner of the backing.

I have a few more quilts that I'm making before I start the second one of these. And I bought a third one to make as a gift.  Hopefully, when I do these other two it won't involve anything at all to do with the flu!  

I really loved watching this quilt come alive.  It was a long, long process with all of that ruler work but well worth it in the end.  Cocoa Bear 🐻 (my son's favorite bear when he was a little boy and who has pride of place on our guest bed) seems to enjoy it!  

Remember to pick up a needle and thread and sew some love into your world❣️