Heather's "Lloyd & Lola"

This quilt from December is a fun choice for the first post on the business blog.

Heather Woodland pieced this Elizabeth Hartman "Lloyd & Lola" pattern, using cotton prints on the blankets and lanterns, and linens for the llamas and background. 

 While I offer complimentary trimming after the quilting has been done, Heather prefers to do that herself. The patch on the right side was used to test tension changes.

Heather chose custom work for this quilt, asking for it to be masculine enough to give to her husband. I went with a very linear approach, pulling in organic motifs on the llama fur, faces, and strings of lanterns/pom-poms to provide aesthetic contrast to all the lines. I used double horizontal lines spaced 3/4" apart for all of the background. 

 We chose Hobbs 80/20, as Heather's climate is way too hot for anything more. (Thinking only of the quilting, I would choose wool or wool-over-80/20 for the prettiest dimension, but practical concerns need to be considered as well.) 

The seams were all pressed open, ruling out true stitch-in-the-ditch work. Linen is remarkably accommodating, though, and for all the lantern globes and both llamas, I was able to do a super close echo line to stabilize, define, and give me a turn-around place for the line work. I'm not sure I would like the effect well enough on an all-cotton quilt. On the linen, the So Fine thread I was using just melted right in.

Here you can see how the close-echoing substitution for stitch-in-ditch stands out more on the cottons in the neck and leg bands, like a decorative edge stitching:

The kind of quilting you want to be done can affect your decision to press seams open or to one side.

Love these sweet faces!!

Complete with hair-do's. 

Gotta have those!

Blankets got 1/4" echo lines for the strips and a freehand wavy line in the trim.

Legs got meandering vertical lines.

Lanterns/pom-poms got wavy outlines, curved arcs from top to top, and coordinating drops along the lower spans to set their dimension off a bit more, to counter the lines - lines - lines, and to camouflage the seams in the background around them. Those seams really stood out before that detail work. I take many factors into consideration when designing the quilting approach for every custom quilt.

This quilt makes me happy! Elizabeth's pattern and Heather's careful construction gave me a slate of pure fun to work with. And llamas are terrific listeners when you're quilting them. I found myself talking out loud to them several times. . . Ha!