Breaking Records - Diary of a Quilt #6

Well, I’ve been doing a spot of quilting but recently I’ve been stopped in my tracks. I hurt my back quite badly. This hasn’t happened for about six years, so I guess I was due! Anyhoo, it means I’ve had to take it very easy indeed for a while and I need to avoid quilting until I’ve strengthened my back again.

So, here are a couple of pics of where I’ve got to with this quilt so far – I hope you can see what’s going on.

I wanted to keep the quilting designs for this quilt quite angular, even masculine, if you will, to counterpoint all that curved piecing. So, first of all, I addressed the centre parts of the records and for this I adapted a design by Leah Day on her Free Motion Quilting Project called Layered Flower – a nice, angular, radiating design, which works really well in those centre circles. I just changed it up a bit so that the design is a bit more open in the centre, avoiding a bit of excess thread build up. I’ve used a variety of threads in colours to contrast or co-ordinate with the colours of the centres. In the photograph above, the teal centre is quilted using a Madeira Cotona teal/turquoise variagated 30wt cotton quilting thread and below I actually used an Aurifil 28wt cotton thread. I particularly like the Aurifil 28wt threads for quilting – they have a beautiful soft sheen and look fantastic. I think the design and the thread choices are quite successful!  

Then in the black areas of the records I’ve quilted an angular wishbone design. I used a lovely Superior Threads King Tut 40wt cotton thread in a black/grey/brown variegated colour called Obsidian. Perfect! I really like it and I think it works well.



So, now I’m just waiting to be strong enough to tackle the background grey areas – quilting is surprisingly physical! I haven’t quite decided how to fill in these areas yet, although I do have a lovely variegated mid-grey King Tut, which I intend to use. I can’t wait to get sewing again!