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Art Quilt - Grandma Part 4

The quilting has begun!

The center portrait was heavily quilted. I used a several different threads for the skin tone and the blue shorts. The shirt, although its checkered, I only used white.



I took the pics using my phone while the quilt was still at the sewing machine, giving me the dark blob at the top but just ignore that. I tried to use a matching thread color for the skin tone areas and a dark. I tried to contour her face, legs and arms after all faces and legs are round not straight lines. So stick with curved lines over curved areas unless you want to simplify. I'll show you what I mean later.

The green of the flowers were a pain. I couldn't really see any shapes of the leaves among the green mass that was in the picture, so I made it up. Some quilting was curved and other areas were simply straight lines, the flowers were curved lines meeting in the center.


For the background of the quilt, I chose a fairly simple vine with curves, leaves and a few flowers. That will be all over the background areas between the colored pencil drawings and then I'll probably do a meander stitch in between everything else getting.

For the two portraits of grandma to either side of the main picture, I chose to simplify my quilting and did straight lines through the portraits using a thread color that blended in with the pictures. This really cut down on the amount of stitching, quilted it nicely and let the viewer see the portrait.



Next, I quilted the Ohio State "O" and the football helmet. The helmet has more detail but I mainly used a matching thread and rounded curves. I used a dark dark gray (almost black), gray, white and red for the block O and text. You can see a lot of the vines, leaves and flowers for the background in the picture below.



Next, I quilt the dog. I was not happy with the result but since I can't change anything I'll just have to swallow my unhappiness and move on. There was a lot of stitching for the dog and it puckered the quilt a little bit. Hopefully the rest of the quilting will straighten that out a little.



I still have a lot of background area and the upper right top corner with a cardinal in it to quilt but I'd say it's over half done. I just need to finish it and get the binding done.













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