susansomethings

Beautiful..good luck!! It's a winner in my book!

fivepaws

This is not usually a favorite pattern of mine but I must say yours is the most beautiful one I have ever seen. Your colors are glorious and your quilting is magnificent. I think you have made me change my mind on the flower basket pattern.

ScrapQuilter

That is such a great quilt and the quilting WOW........ I see BIG BUCKS in your future...... Happy Birthday too.

majormom

Wow! What perfection - everywhere you look, perfection! And beauty.

Rachelcb80

You are entirely too kind with your praise. But I absolutely agree that a person can achieve wonderful results on a domestic machine. A long arm is not required to quilt well. One area that I'm still not pleased with and feel a long arm would help a lot in is basting and keeping the layers tight. I pin and pin and pin but there is some shifting, like it or not, while moving the quilt all around through a domestic machine. I love how a quilt can be loaded and clipped so firmly on a long arm frame, but that alone is just not enough to sell me on the purchase of a very expensive and limited use item.

BLAP

What an outstanding quilt. Good Luck!

Rachelcb80

Thank you so much for your very nice compliments. I'll try and answer your questions as best I can. I typically do not mark my quilts for quilting. In fact this was really the first quilt I've marked. I made a stencil for the little swirls around the basket and a stencil for the flower (made them out of the cheap, clear plastic sheeting you can get at Hancocks). I marked those and then just pebbled around the marked shapes. For my feathers I marked the spines because I'm just not good at traveling large distances on a quilt without a general line to guide me. I'm actually not that great at feathers yet and am a little regretful I used them on a quilt meant to show. One would think it should be simple to realize you shouldn't use a new skill on something that will be judged but conventional wisdom often escapes me.

I really don't have a set direction that I normally quilt. I position the quilt so the least amount of it is in the throat space and then that determines which direction I will quilt (away, towards me or side to side). For the border I quilted so that I was pushing the quilt away from me. Makes it easier than having it start to pile up in my lap.

This quilt is roughly 70" by nearly 80" I think. Silly that I can't remember but I measure, write it down and then don't think about it again. The larger throat space in the newer machines really does help when quilting, but it doesn't provide a magical solution to all quilting problems. I hate to hear it myself but practice and more practice is what will increase your skills. A nice new machine sometimes makes practice more fun though.

MrsM

Speechless! WoW!!!

Rachelcb80

Thank you so much! I did have a Bernina 820 but I sold it this summer. I purchased the Janome Horizon and have been very, very pleased with it.

Grandma Peg

Absolutely beautiful quilt and quilting. You did a great job all the way around.