Blue River Quilt part 3

A while back, I was reading Myrna's blog and she was talking about choosing colors for her quilt by photographing them and looking at them in gray scale. I began to wonder how MY piece would hold up to critique in gray scale.



It DOES have the desired value shift that I was after, transitioning from dark in the upper left to light in the foreground. I was surprised, though, at the way some of the 'trees' just blended right in to the background! This is not evident in the colored version, which IS, after all, the real thing! Overall, I am pleased with the choices.









I'm in the quilting stage now, but thread selection is my hold-up. I had good results with some Madiera POLY NEON thread, but the variegated Sulkys gave me trouble...the thread kept breaking, plus, when I went to rip out the stitching, I could pull hard on the bobbin thread and it would 'break' the top threads, allowing me to basically rip out the whole seam by pulling on the bobbin...not slipping out from under the loops, but actually pulling the top thread down and breaking it!! No, the Sulky is not strong enough. I must go find other threads before I can progress.








I drew lines on the quilt top to create sections to stitch within. I haven't worked out all the areas yet, so I stitch only where I have decided what to do!


The long thread tails will be threaded onto a needle and pulled in between the layers to eliminate them, as opposed to just cutting them off.

I used a basting spray to temporarily attach the 3 layers, then loaded it onto 2 of the 3 poles of the HandiQuilter frame. This way, I can stitch across the full width of the piece, going back and forth as the design requires, instead of stitching in long narrow strips from top to bottom.