Fire Island Hosta

Kathryn sent me  her amazing version of Fire Island Hosta Queen for custom quilting.   The fabrics are amazing!  She added piping and some inset accent borders to what is already a beautiful pattern by Judy Niemeyer.  I hope you like it Kathryn!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The peacock feathers were challenging fabrics to work with.  My first choice would to have been to do something peacock related in all of those sections.  I did quilt a peacock feathery spray into the leaf shape but decided to stay traditional with the outer borders.  Its hard to discern feathery shapes over the fabric.  But also not possible to mark a grid on these fabrics either for really detailed designs.   Geometric designs usually show well with busy fabrics.   I aligned with the piecework in the arcs and stitched a beadboard in the interior peacock and I think it works well.  The next dilemma, how to incorporate a design that goes into the light spikes and fills that border.   I treated it as 2 sections.   The light area, I wish it were bigger!   Wouldn't that have been cool to have a peacock head in the center of each section and then peacock style feathers radiating out to each corner?!   Judy quilts always have odd sections to fill, they look lovely but they can be challenging to decide on a quilt plan.   The outer pointy spikes again had very busy fabrics. I decided not to compete with them and used simple shapes.  That brings me up to the final peacock border.   Again, my first choice would be to fill with a peacock spray or a spiral.   But I hadn't used a spiral design anywhere else and I thought the peacock designs get lost or compete with the printed design.   Beadboard would work but I already had such strong linear work in the arcs and then again in the inner peacock and the next blue spikes.  I gambled and filled with a feather design to complement the feathery shapes in the leaves, the light and then the outer border 

 

The fabrics were so blended, I could have used just about any color on the peacock and brown areas.   Everything blended, even the green!  The blue, I could have used a high contrast thread there and gotten more bang, but I didn't really think the quilt needed more color.  The blue is the perfect accent and calming sections for all the peacock.  I thought I might get some visual impact if I used lots of colors, so I ended up with 10 color changes.   And somehow they all still seem to blend on the front and the back too!   But the dimension does show.   Double batting with Quilters Dream wool over Hobbs 80/20. 

 

Its a beautiful quilt that is stunning before a single quilting stitch was added.  Thank you for letting me custom quilt for you Kathryn!