Tamara Kate Quilt Along: Part 3

Welcome back to the Whatever the Weather Quilt Along!

by Tamara Serrao, Tamara Kate Designs

So, you’ve chosen and cut your fabrics and you’ve built your rainbow wheel and dealt with all those angles. Now it’s time to quilt your Whatever the Weather Quilt. {Be sure to read all the way to the end of this post!}

As with most quilts, there are a number of ways you could tackle the quilting here. As I am far from an expert on free motion quilting, I will leave that part to you who know better than I. Walking foot quilting, however is my thing and the geometry in this quilt lends itself well to the accuracy that can be achieved with this method. One simple and pretty obvious way to quilt it would be with using concentric circles, either keeping your circles a consistent distance apart, or varying the distancesdepending on whether quilting over the coloured triangles or the ground areas. I opted, however, to follow the hard edges of the triangles, playing on the “weather” theme to make the quilting act almost as rays of the sun.

Here I will walk you through the simple steps:

Quilting in the Ditch

The first step is to quilt straight lines in the ditch, from one fabric edge to the opposite, all the way around the quilt, dividing the quilt into sections, like cutting a cake. You should have 12 lines in total (see the red lines above). Remember not to rush it and pull your quilt through. Let the machine do the work to avoid puckering.

Now to outline the triangles

Again, here you will be stitching in the ditch, tackling the rings separately. As in the above image, first trace around the outer edges of the outermost triangles (orange line) all the way around the circle, stopping with your needle down at each corner, lifting your walking foot and pivoting your fabric before continuing down the next side.

The purple line is an easy one, running along the bottom of the same triangles. You can tackle the next 2 rings of coloured triangles together, viewing them as diamonds instead of 2 rows of triangles. First follow the pink line all the way around the ring, going from the top of one diamond to thebottom of the next. Now do the opposite (the green line), again pivoting your fabric at each corner. Do the same with the dark triangles, following the 2 blue lines.

This next step fills in all the ground fabric spaces between the triangles. Using the edge of the walking foot as a guide to keep your quilting lines a consistent distance from the triangles as well as from the previous lines of stitching, sew 3 concentric diamonds (orange lines above) between all the coloured triangles. For each series of 3 diamonds, after each diamond is sewn, follow the very first cake-cutting stitch lines you created to get to the starting point of your next diamond.

This is a fairly invisible method to avoid having to start and stop too many times and have too many ends to bury. You can have some fun in the ground area around the outside of the coloured wheel. Here I varied the distance between my lines of stitching (blue lines above), echoing the outermost triangle points all the way to the edges of the fabric.

The Janome I have the pleasure of sewing with has an adjustable guide bar that can be attached to the AcuFeed (walking) foot. I simply slide it to the width of space I want between my rows of stitching and I have an automatic guide that keeps me on the right path. Easy as that, your quilt is quilted.
(NOTE: Many Janome machines come equipped with, or have an optional even feed/ walking foot that comes with a quilting bar. This accessory can be used in the same manner)

Now all you have left to do is bind it and hang it in a spot where you can regularly appreciate all your hard work. I hope you’ve enjoyed this quilt along as much as I have!

SURPRISE FABRIC GIVE AWAY!

If you have put this project on your future To-Do list, here’s a chance to get you on track to getting started. I am offering 2 charm packs of all those 72 bright, colourful Tamara Kate fabrics to 2 randomly drawn winners (One here and one over on my own blog). For the first pack, all you need to do is leave a comment below to enter.* For the second, head on over to my blog, at Kaya Joy Designs and do the same thing. Draws close a week from today.

Best of luck,

Tamara

*Draw is open to Canadian residents, of age of majority in their province.