This Crystal Waters Quilt is made from hand dyed batik fabric using a Cross and Crown pattern. The fabric is dyed to resemble tropical crystal waters at various times of the day ... midnight waters ... quiet morning waters and sparkling afternoon waters. I made this quilt for my great niece, Devan, who lives in the midwest but loves to visit places with tropical waters 🏝 It's my hope that this bohemian quilt will remind her of warmer climates in the midst of icy cold midwestern winters.
I don't always love my quilts when they're done but I love this one. I was tempted to keep it for myself. I just love all those colors❣️
Before I started sewing this quilt I washed all the hand dyed batik fabric with Synthrapol to wash away the extra dye from the batik dying process and set the colors. I also threw in some color catchers to pick up the dye so that it wouldn't wash back into the fabric. I divided the fabric into several loads ... dark, medium and light colors and then did separate loads for the larger backing and background fabrics. Then I had to press the fabric and treat it with Best Press to give it its shape back. Once this process was done I cut out the pieces and and got them ready for sewing.
The blocks are fun to put together. I love the fabric colors in this quilt. It has a very bohemian look to it.
Scraps for the thread matching process. |
Once on the longarm I started the top border only to realize that I had forgot to pick out a thread color for that so it was back to the quilt shop again that day. Once that grape thread arrived home I did the top border and worked my way down the quilt to do all the stitching in the ditch and then the bottom border. Then I rolled the quilt back up to do all the background stitching on the white fabric. Then I rolled the quilt back up one last time to do all the quilting in the colorful piece work.
The Binding Baby |
It's not easy to photograph a quilt and get the quilting to show. I have to shoot it in the semi-dark and then go back in and brighten all of the settings. That's what I did in the above picture to show the quilting.