Posh Bird

I finished the bird quilt for Anna's Christmas present! It's cute, don't you think? I really like the border combo that Paige and I came up with.

I love the fabric on the back. It's a bummer it's on the backside!

I quilted it with a pastel variegated thread. I had really meant to use white thread in the white areas, and variegated in the printed blocks, but I forgot to change thread colors and didn't notice until I had 4 of the sash areas already quilted. To quote DiscoJen "Oh well! It's done now!" The variegated is nice though, it breaks up the white areas nicely. There is a saying in the quilting community to address just this situation: "There are no mistakes in quilting, only design opportunities."
I used a pattern from the AQG magazine I happened to pick up just prior to quilting, and was pleased when I leafed through it and saw the perfect pattern and it was the right size! How fortuitous!

I found a new way of marking the quilt top that I have to share with all of my quilting friends! I'm very excited because it worked exceptionally well, and is a lot less expensive than the Golden Threads paper. It doesn't wipe off like chalk, and you don't have to worry about whether ironing or washing it will make the marks permanent.

I used Sulky transparent water soluble interfacing that I got at Joanne Fabrics when it was on sale for half off a few weeks ago. I did find (on a test scrap, luckily) that you need to use a washable marker to trace your patterns onto the interfacing though. Once you trace your pattern, pin it to the quilt top, stitch on the lines, then pull off. Anything left or caught in the stitching will dissolve when you wash the quilt! I found that I like it better than the golden threads paper, because the paper sometimes pulls at the stitches, and is a royal pain in the patooty to pick out of smaller stitched areas.

The bolt that you find behind the cutting counter, in with the interfacing is significantly cheaper than the packets that are on the notions wall. It was $1.50/yd on the bolt! And you can cut much longer sections from the bolt so as to not have to piece the patterns together, making for smoother free motion.

Here's a close up of the quilting patterns: