My Home Quarter

  

This is going to be a bit of a unique post.  I made this Home Quarter quilt top, but I did not do the longarm quilting!  I made this top at a Highway 10 Designs retreat earlier this year (remember quilting retreats?) that Kathy and I hosted at Keystone Modern Creative.  The fabric was a bundle of fat quarters in the Libbs Elliot Tattooed North line.  I didn't have a plan for the quilt so it went onto my "to be quilted" stack.

This spring I participated in a quilt-a-long and won a super generous prize of a $200 gift certificate for longarm quilting services donated by Shelly of Ma Tante Quilting in Minnedosa, MB.  This first question I was asked was "Did I want the prize?" as I was a longarm quilter myself.  My answer was an enthusiastic "Absolutely!"  I have followed Shelley on Instagram since she started and she does absolutely lovely work.  Shelly has a fully computerized machine and can do totally different things than I can as a hand guided quilter.

.  I liked the quilt top well enough, but it didn't come out quite like I thought it would in my head.  I thought some digital modern quilting might just be the thing to take it up a notch.  I knew I wanted a very detailed very geometric pattern.  I searched many pattern sites online and settled on this design from Karlee Porter called "Fancy Schmancy."  Parallel straight lines and perfect circles are the exact opposite of what I normally look for in a pantograph!

  I decided that since the top was feeling a bit plain before it got quilted, I would add a surprising backing fabric for a little more interest.  This quilt needed more mustard than the few splashes on the top!

Shelly did a wonderful job scaling the pantograph to suit my quilt. I sent along Quilter's Dream Puff batting and I love the loft that the quilt has even after its dense quilting.   It was a fun experience sending my quilt off to have someone do something that was outside of my capabilities.

Home Quarter is available as a pdf download or in paper format on the Highway 10 Designs website.  You can also ask your favorite local quilt store to stock it for you.  This is the queen size version that uses 36 fat quarters.   

Thanks Shelly for helping me get this out of my "to be quilted pile!"