Saturday, March 28, 2015

Windmill in the Mail

Windmill is quilted, bound, washed and in the mail. What a fun and easy process from Sujata Shah's book. She's started a blog for Cultural Fusion Quilts where you'll find many more made by herself and others.

This quilt began with leftover fabric I used to make some centers on Propellers and Planes. I'd set them to the side while deciding whether or not to keep them. But as I was sorting my stash, more fabrics appeared that just went with these wild things.

Strongly patterned fabrics are cut free-form into windmill blade shapes to make the block.
Windmill quilt

I don't know what came over me: the fabric seemed to magically fall into place and the top was done in a day.

I wrote about the quilting at the bottom of this post. Several quilters posted photos with something similar. They were so lovely but didn't include instructions so I made up my own method. Here's a close up of the tightest section of the curve quilting.

Top left corner of Windmill shows
the curve quilting with the smallest radius.

In the opposite corner, the radii are the largest.

Bottom right corner of Windmill
where the curve has the largest radius.

Another idea that struck me from other quilters is using leftovers for binding. Here's mine. I really like the black/white/red diamond print both as binding and in the blocks (see the second photo.)

The double fold binding is made from any
fabric in the quilt that was leftover again.
Cut 2.25" wide by whatever length was available.

Enjoy the day, Ann