Fly Home--Tenth Finish of 3rd Quarter Finish-A-Long 2018

Auditioning threads

After I had the ditch quilting completed, I needed inspiration as to where to quilt what next. I thought about my dad who was a private pilot and how he mapped his routes using his various flight charts. I remember looking at the different airport maps and their runways wondering how one could keep them straight! I can see him sitting at the kitchen table, plotting his route using a slide rule, compass and a protractor. These were the days before hand held calculators.

I decided to use rulers for much of the quilting. My friend, JoJo, gave me some thread that she purchased from Martha's stash. While I liked the thread, I decided I would need to do bobbin work to use it, so I dug through my thread and came up with a sulky metallic thread that quilted nicely.

Straight line quilting design in right corner

I began stitching the red lines in the propeller. I free motioned quilted these lines with red cotton thread. Using the rulers, I started with a straight line design in one of the triangles.

Next, I divided the space around the propeller. First, I placed a box about half an inch outside of the propeller and then I extended the space using the prairie points as the edges of the section. I thought of my dad's compass as I quilted circles. Sometimes, the circles were on top of the one next to it and sometimes, the circles were behind the one next to it. I liked both quilting designs.

Circles around the propeller 

To decide what to do in the bottom two sections, I decided that I would continue the circle motif in the lower section. It is good to have repetition in the quilting. Then, I thought about longitude and latitude lines on a map and decided to put a few in the second triangle space. It was a little tricky quilting the arcs when the space to quilt was larger than my ruler; but, I managed.

That left just the top corners to quilt. I decided that I would go with a repetition of straight lines as that would be a good contrast to the circles.

Texture before adding shadow

As I looked at the quilting, I decided that it was even and that I liked the motifs that I had chosen. The quilting, however, seemed too heavy on the sunshine and too light on the shadow. I spent some time adding some shadow to the open spaces in the lower right triangle and the lines at the top of the propeller. I found it was easier to free motion the shadow lines than to use the ruler. I liked the results.

This is the sort of piece that I hope the viewer will be attracted to visit because it is so graphic with the striped fabric. I hope that the quilting will draw the viewer closer to the piece. It makes me smile when I see people nose close to one of my projects!!!

Sunshine and shadow are terms that Cindy Needham uses. She describes sunshine as the more open areas of the quilting and the shadow as the denser areas of the quilting. She says to have a balance of both so that your eye is drawn more into the project. She is so wise!

With a little shadow added

Detail of the shadow quilting 

Piece with the added shadow quilting

As for thread, I thought that I would use the silver polyester thread to create some shadow. However, It was too light and would draw too much attention away from the stripe design. I also thought I might use the black thread; but, it proved too dark! I even tried red cotton and red silk threads but those didn't show enough. I'm glad that I had that multi color metallic black thread as that worked great!

After I had quilted the piece, I squared the piece, added the edge finish for the facing and pressed the facing into position. Three of the corners turned perfectly. The fourth. . .well, it didn't work. I didn't realize that I hadn't aligned the edges of the corner correctly until I was turning the corner. Of course, I had trimmed the corner so there was no going back!!!

Additional design element--back

After several hours of thinking how to fix my goof, I added some trim fabric in that area. Now, I have an additional design element and love what happened as a result of that problem!

In fact, after the fix, it would have looked even better had I made the slash bigger. As it is, that little peak of red in the corner makes me want to lift the corner to see what is behind. I wonder if others will want to do the same, or, if, they will even notice?

A few years ago, I might have cut the quilt and bound that edge or I might have left it in the unfinished state! I sure liked my "easier" solution! Live and learn!

Additional design element--front

Project label

I attached a photo of my label. It was fun to challenge myself to use a large leftover HST! (Half Square Triangle)
Had I had more writing room, I would have included that the strips represent runways/taxi ways and the center applique represent the moving propeller. I would have mentioned the quilting designs were inspired by watching my dad plot his trips when he was a private pilot. BUT . . .there I didn't have enough space to share that much of the story!

It took me about 42 hours of actual work on this piece. Miss J helped me with the final press. She LOVES working with tools and pressing the button for a burst of steam was so much fun for her! (I try to involve the grands as much as possible in my projects. When I look back at the finished piece, I have so many special memories!) I spent many more hours thinking about possibilities though! I envisioned those prairie points with a bead, a button or something fun. I like them as they are so I'm calling this project finished!

The striped fabric was left from a previous project, the black background and backing fabric came to 2 and 1/8 yards. I have now used 28 1/4 yards of fabric from my stash and have 21 3/4 yards left to meet my goal of using 50 yards of fabric from my stash this year. This was goal number one on my 3rd Quarter Finish A Long list.

Finished back with added interest corner

A photo of the back shows the fabric I used to trim the striped strips. I didn't know how much I would like the texture that print provided!

Last a photo of the front. I see the speck of red on the lower left corner. We know the story behind it! Who knew that such a small project would take so long or stretch my design capabilities? It was fun and that is how quilting should be!

Finished front