Finished Quilt: Crackle in Detail

I know I already showed you Crackle, but....

It's time for a full, finished project post!

The pattern for this quilt is in Make Modern Issue Five. This Aussie-based, digital magazine is fantastic - it has tons of quilt patterns, and articles that appeal especially to us modern quilters. This issue has a lengthy article on Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle, which was a really interesting read. Seems like there's a little tension between their thoughts on Modern Quilting, and the MQG's thoughts. So if you're into the philosophy of Modern Quilting, that'll pique your interest. There are patterns from Amanda of Material Girl Quilts, Christa of Christa Quilts, and a whole slew of other people :)

The quilting on this project was intense. I started quilting it, but with threads breaking every few inches, no matter what thread + needle combo I tried, I knew it just wasn't going to work. So I sent in my Juki to get that finally corrected (I've been having this issue ever since I bought it, yuck), and had a whopping 4 days to quilt this beast. No problem, right? Right.

{gratuitous child photobomb}

My husband and I were fighting over how to quilt this thing (you can tell we have a good marriage if quilting is pretty much all we fight over). He wanted me to do ghost shapes and geometric quilting ala Krista Withers, but I wanted to do a massive laurel wreath of feathers ala Angela Walters. He wasn't impressed. Almost every idea for quilting I had involved the word "feather" and he wasn't having it. Lol.

I asked for some advice from Kathleen on how to quilt this thing, and she drew up some amazing sketches. I'm considering doing a second version and sending it to her to quilt, because wow.

But then the machine issues happened, and I was down to 4 days to quilt, so I settled for the design that was actually feasible to do in that amount of time. So I went with French braids (those wavy things), and my go-to pebbles. It was massively fun to do. (I did free motion quilt stabilizing straight lines around the red piecing, first. It wasn't hard to do on my Juki)

This quilt finishes at 60" x 84". I haven't washed my quilt yet, but the reds have all been prewashed, so I'm not worried about it.

The backing is a print from Yoshiko Jinzenji (plus two Parson Gray strips to make it long enough). I trimmed it and pieced it together - there is a seam running straight down the middle - right through those black blocks.

I bought this fabric at QuiltCon - my only fabric purchase - and totally love it! She was actually standing right in front of my just before I got this fabric cut - but I didn't know it was her until the woman cutting fabric told me it was her, after she walked away. Probably for the better. I would have just swooned and made a colossal fool of myself!

Anyway. Totally loving this quilt. I think I'll try to enter it into QuiltCon next year.

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday.