A Finish and A Show

Dress for Success is completed. Yay!

The quilt is in Ohio at the Sauder Village Quilt Show. If you live within three hours of Archbold, it is well worth the drive as they usually have over 400 quilts on display. Show runs from Tues., May 2 through Sun. May 7, 2017.

Dress for Success was made from two pre-printed panels designed by Holly Holderman of LakeHouse Dry Goods. Borders are my own. The first border consists bright colored squares. The outer border is a finely checked red which can read as a solid, but has a bit of interest. The red and white striped border was inspired by Red Pepper Quilts striped bindings.

This is the first quilt that I machine quilted with the use of a walking foot. It was a pleasant surprise that I could machine outline (slowly) the dresses. Minimal hand quilting was done near the neckline and embellishments as access with the walking foot was limited.

Similar dress quilts have been stipple quilted. Since I am not confident with free motion, I stitched a traditional straight diagonal on the background. My intent was to have the dresses stand out and not the quilt stitches.

There is stitch-in-the-ditch quilting, more diagonal lines in the squares (easy peasy). For the outer border, I used a stencil and marked with a washable Crayola which I pretested. Although the marks soaked out, I was a nervous wreck that they would stain the quilt. In the future, I will use another marker or method.

Since this was a pre-printed panel, I under estimated the time it would take. Lol. Has that happened to you on a quilt project? Hand embellishments took time as each dress is different. The diagonal quilt stitching required many starts and stops at each dress. I persevered for the Sauder Village Quilt Show entry deadline which also coincided with the Grand Rapids AQS deadline.

Looking forward to starting another quilt. There is fabric in my stash anxiously awaiting.  :-)

Jill