Thursday 14 May 2015

Arizona - an Aztec styled quilt

I while ago I bought a bundle of Arizona fabric by April Rhodes. The bundle included matching Art Gallery solids from the Pure Elements range which made a nice set of 14 fat quarters. I haven't used matching solids in my quilts before rather I tend to use a white background to my blocks so I wanted to explore a design that would incorporate both the solids and fabrics together.

I was fortunate enough to share my design with Quilter's Companion magazine who will be featuring my quilt later in the year so I can only share with you a couple of progress shots for the time being.


I incorporated some flying geese blocks and some square in a square blocks and decided to use a quilt as you go method as the blocks are quite large to make the quilting more manageable on my domestic machine.


I bought some matching Aurifil cotton mako' threads in the 40 weight which is a little heavier than the standard 50 weight thread but shows off the quilting stitches nicely. I love that there is just so many colours to chose from making it so easy to match the fabric you are working on perfectly.


I did some shadow quilting around the geese and squares in the quilt to create texture.


I really liked the feel of quilting with the aurifil threads which I hadn't used before.





I am loving the way the quilt is coming together it has a real Aztec feel to it and I can't wait to finish it off with a final border using the Nocturnal solid from the Pure Elements Art Gallery range.

The quilt will be Queen sized and I will be keeping this one for me for my spare bed and I'm sure it will make it's way on the couch now the nights are getting colder here.

Linking up at Freshly Pieced for WiP Wednesday!

Till next time....happy sewing....

xx Jenny