I am so pleased to have finished the Granny's Hankie Quilt! The quilt came out to 98" square with the quilting. Can you hear my son behind the quilt complaining - "Stop making such big quilts Mom!" - my husband and son are standing on stools with their arms up - the quilt is floor to ceiling.
This was a 2011 block-of-the-month from Denise Russart at Just Quilting. Thank-you so much the wonderful pattern Denise!
My sister was kind enough to let me take a picture of the quilt on her queen size bed (because I don't have a bed big enough - yes, another quilt for the closet, or as my brother says - to cover the lawn tractor).
Now for some details on the quilting -
I quilted in the ditch around all the blocks and all appliqué pieces, and then did "McTavishing" in the block backgrounds. I "pebbled" the centre circles of the blocks (because I thought they were too puffy).
I free motion quilted the sashing with perpendicular lines, and the yellow inner border is quilted using the walking foot. I thought that the straight lines contrasted with the curves of the other quilting. I kept the circles in the thin black border plain because they complimented the appliqué pieces.
I quilted a meandering feather in the black "connected garages" and McTavished the red background.
The outer border (the yellow/red/yellow one) was quilted with a design from the amazingly talented Judi at Green Fairy Quilts - she kindly gave me permission to copy one of her designs (mine is no where near as nice as the original seen here, but I am so pleased with how it turned out. There is so much stitching in this border - each side used 2 bobbins of thread!).
Borders are a great place to try harder quilting designs if you quilt on a domestic sewing machine - it is just easier to quilt borders.
The corner nine-pathces have feathered wreathes because that is one of my favourite designs (and I try to add them where ever I can!).
This is some of the thread that I used. The black is a 60Wt thread from Tre Stelle - there was 2000 meters on that spool, and the red almost empty spool is Genziana 50Wt thread (also Tre Stelle) - only 1300 meters on that spool (I had to start using Aurifil in the bobbin because I knew that I wouldn't have enough red thread). I used different colours of Aurifil 50Wt thread for around the appliqué pieces. I found the Tre Stelle thread a bit lintier than Aurifil (the thread I normally use for quilting), but I really liked quilting with the 60Wt thread.
The batting is wool (Hobbs Tuscany). The quilt started out 102" and is now 98" square. I used a white Clover pen and a Clover Hera marker for marking the quilting lines. It is quilted on my domestic sewing machine.