Fire and Ice

{A Picture Heavy Post}

This is my Zen Doodle quilt which I designed during a class taught by Sue Patten.  She calls it a "Zen Suedle" or a "Not-Your-Grandmother's Wholecloth Quilt."  I decided to name mine "Fire and Ice" due to the thread colors I used.  During the class we got the quilt top marked.

I decided to quilt this on my Tiara because I have more control with tiny designs while sitting down.  I started out quilting red and a little orange.

I added more orange and then the yellow.

Once I switched to a variegated thread I had tension problems.  Twenty minutes of quilting led to two hours unpicking.

That really slowed me down.  Eventually I was able to fix the tension and quilt all the warm color variegated thread sections.

Then I added a pop of blue variegated thread for contrast.

The blue added so much to the overall look of the quilt.  At that point I realized all my chalk pencil markings for the background had disappeared.  I had to put the project aside until I felt like marking it again.  I find that I need more breaks on more detailed projects.

Finally, I marked the background and quilted it with a very dark gray thread.  I really like that the background thread is a little lighter than the Kona Black.

The quilting took a little over two months.  It has nearly 200,000 stitches.  That is as many stitches as a large queen size quilt I quilted in the past.  I love how all the quilting turned out.

I am so pleased with how it looks on the back as well.

I am grateful that even though I quilted by color and not from the center out, there weren't any tucks on the back of the quilt.  It is almost a double sided quilt with the solid black top and the printed gray back.

 Now on to the finished quilt...

I will let the pictures speak for themselves.  ;)

I'm loving this finished quilt which finishes about 41 by 53 inches.

XX,
Jasmine

P.S.  I will be linking up with some of the fun parties on my sidebar.  Check them out to see what other quilters have been creating.