Floating: A Finished Quilt

I finished "Floating" just in time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  It is currently my most favorite quilt.  So I am entering it in the large quilt category.  If you are visiting from the BQF, welcome and thanks for stopping by.  If not, you can click on the button to see what everyone else has entered in the festival.

The pattern for this quilt is called "Magic Carpet," and it is designed by Christina Cameli.  I changed the pattern a little bit, and you can find out more about my changes in this post.  Christina Cameli has also written two books about free-motion machine quilting, and I mostly used designs from her books with a few of my favorites added in.  You can check out this post for more information about how I quilted it.

I named my quilt "Floating" because magic carpets float in the air, and the squares seem to float on the black background.

I love to see how quilting changes a quilt.  While I really like how the top turned out...

I absolutely love the finished quilt!!!

Every single one of the overlapping squares is quilted with a different FMQ design.  Including the square spirals on the black fabric, there are 72 different designs on this fun FMQ sampler.  You can see the whole quilt in this picture.

While it looks pretty in the shade...

It really sparkles in the sunlight.

I quilted it with Floriani's polyester embroidery thread, and I love how it turned out.  There are more than 350,000 stitches on this quilt, and my thread only broke twice.  (I love the stitch counter on my Baby Lock Tiara.)  I used nine M-class bobbins and spent 18 hours on the machine quilting.  Totally worth it.

The quilt top is all Kona solids.  Starting in the center and working toward the edges, I used:  Cerise, Valentine, Candy Pink, Violet, Magenta, Tulip, and Black.

The backing is a Riley Blake Blender in Magenta.  It really is a deeper color than it shows up in the photos.  (I'm blaming that on the sparkly thread.)

It looks really neat with the sparkly threads and the light shining through as well.

I bound the quilt in Kona Black to keep the floating look.  I stitched it down to the back by hand.

I used a scrap of the backing for the label, so it blends in nicely.

I had so much fun experimenting with photography on this quilt.  It was too big for my favorite spot on the fence...

And the quilting didn't show as much in the shade where I normally hang it on the deck.

So I tried somewhere new.

It might have seemed a little windy.

But it was just my little helper.

Maybe quilts are more fun than the swings.  ;)

We both like my new hanging spot, and I wonder why I haven't hung a quilt there before.

Quilt Stats #140
Quilt name: Floating
Pattern: Magic Carpet
Fabrics used:  Kona Cerise, Valentine, Candy Pink, Violet, Magenta, Tulip, and Black
Backing:  Riley Blake blender in Magenta
Amount used: 11.5 yards
Batting: Hobbs 80/20
Size: About 75 x 87
Date finished: May 2015
What I learned:

• I can quilt more than 70 different designs! Two years ago I had a hard time quilting only 12.
• The more designs I quilted, the easier they became.
• I love the look of Floriani polyester embroidery thread on solid fabrics.
• I tense up up a bit more when quilting densely and couldn't quilt as long at a time.
• It was more difficult (read impossible) for me to prevent tucks when quilting this densely and one color at a time.  (I quilted all the black first to stabilize the quilt then started in the center and worked out.)
• Custom quilting takes a long time.  I pieced the quilt in 6 hours, but it took 18 hours to quilt it.
• I need to check for grease on my needle bar before quilting, especially if I just had it serviced.  

I plan on keeping this quilt in my craft room, but Cheetah thinks it would be perfect for a game of Twister.  Silly boy.

Thanks for stopping by!

XX,
Jasmine

P.S.  I will be linking up with the Blogger's Quilt Festival and other fun linky parties for my finished quilt.  The buttons are on the sidebar.  Check them out to see what other people are doing.