Delectable Mountains

I watch a fair few quilting videos on YouTube.  A couple of years ago I found Carol Thelen, who was releasing a video a day of a different block.  I very much enjoyed these videos, and seeing all the different blocks she was making, and providing free patterns for.  For some blocks, Carol showed what they would look like as a whole quilt.  And when I saw the delectable mountains block and quilt, I knew that was the pattern to use for a layer cake I had laying around.

The Benartex layer cake had been sitting in the stash for a few years, maybe since one of mum's trips to the US?  I didn't want a plain background (though it does sort of look like it in the photos), so I ended up purchasing three different low volume fabrics in white from the usual big shop.

After one of my last quilts which had a few hundred small half square triangles, it was quite nice to work with a much larger half triangle size.  These were then trimmed, cut into rectangles and rearranged to produce the mountain design.  

Considering some of the quilts I have made over the last few years, this was a breeze to make.  So after finishing off the last quilt, and in between all sorts of other things, I got the top together.  However, that is how it stayed for a while, packed up in one of my project boxes, waiting for me to find time to quilt it, but more importantly, waiting for me to figure out how I was going to quilt it.

Over the Christmas break I took it and my vinyl sheet out and traced a few quilting ideas over the top.  I knew I wanted to one thing over the 'mountains' and something else through the background.  After lots of trial and error, I settled on some basic ruler work for the 'mountains', and the echoed pebbles all over design from one of Angela Walters' books.

Then to quilting.  I used the Marti Michell 'low fat' quilting method to help get the centre of the quilt done first, then worked on one end at a time for the rest. First the ruler work, then the free motion.  It felt like the free motion sections were quicker to do, but maybe that is just an illusion as there is less stopping like in ruler work.

There was nothing in my stash that was both the right colour and the right amount to use for the binding, so I took advantage of an existing need to get to a quilt shop to grab a half metre of a teal colour.  And the next free afternoon I had, the quilt was finally complete.

Or was it?  It wasn't until I took it for a drive to get photos that I realised I hadn't put a label on it.  That's alright, I need an excuse to finally get to that needlework shop a short drive away, and see if they have anything that takes my fancy, seeing as I have been hand stitching my own labels for the past few years.  

Location: Perth WA, Australia

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