I love it!

I am thrilled that I have finished the quilting on this piece, but a strange thing happened on the way to done. I love the fabrics, I love the design, I love the people it is going to. But turned out I literally struggled to get it done. I used different quilting designs in each of the squares and felt tapped out to keep finding new ways to do that. So I repeated some of the things here and there, but tried to add variations throughout. By the time I got to the last row of squares, I was unrolling back to the beginning to see what I did there that I could recycle! This is made using Elisa's Backporch circle templates to make 195 7" blocks, enough to fit a king-size comforter. I pondered quite awhile on how to accomplish turning this into a duvet. I had made one before from a pieced quilt but that was before my longarm was here. On that one I had just done straight line quilting through some of the seams to anchor it to a plain backing, then made the back of the duvet from some other pretty fabric. With this one, I wanted to be able to do some pretty quilting in the blocks so I put a thin batting and solid fabric with the top.

The batting helps the quilting show with a little depth but I didn't want this to be so hot and heavy that it was not practical. The batting I used was new for me, it was a Fairfield product that is cotton and bamboo. I was a little leery of using it because I have come across some Fairfield batts that were not so nice (uneven, weak, way too stretchy) but I liked this one. It had none of those problems, although it did have too many dark flecks to make it workable with a white fabric. So anyway, the gamble paid off and it looks and feels great. Now I have a king size flat sheet to attach for the back of the duvet, and before long it will be done done!