Japanese tea cup quilt

Yay! She is finished at last! I have been working on this quilt for what seems like ages! A block here, a block there in between customer quilts. I pulled this pattern out of the August 2009 edition of American Patchwork & Quilting. It is called Steeped in Tradition and it was designed by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes. I have a binder of patterns or just photos of quilts that I like and I finally had a chance to give this one a go.

It was so much fun picking out these fabrics. I stuck fairly close to the colors of the original quilt. I was really hoping I wouldn't have to buy online thinking it would be extremely difficult to match fabrics over the Internet. Fortunately, Sewingly Yours had a great collection of Asian fabrics. Still, I stood there for an hour in the store, putting fabrics next to each other and standing back staring. My son obliged me by playing his Nintendo DS very quietly in the corner so it was okay:)

I knew I wanted to densely quilt this one and the tea cup blocks were the easy ones. I love Angela Walters filler designs and I was dying to try one out. The cream fabric was perfect for showing the design well. By the way, that is a quarter in the top left corner to give you an idea of scale. I used a cream thread to match the background for these squares.

This koi/floral block gave me a lot of trouble design-wise. My original plan was to do an Asian feather block design. I grabbed my gold metallic and set to work. Not only was my machine unimpressed with the metallic, but the design really clashed with the gold in the fabric. I spent an hour picking it all out and decided to simply quilt around the lines on the fabric. Not as exciting, but it really helped emphasize the lines. I ended up picking gray thread and quilted some watery swirls on the bottom piece to bring it all together.

I probably should have quilted some nice water swirls on the teals as well, but I got a little carried away wanting to do something 'extra' special. I picked out some designs I liked and put them all into this fan design. The gray thread was the only color I had that showed the design on each piece.

Just before I finished the quilting, my friend Carrie posted a pic on her blog of her binding being held on with clips as she was sewing it onto the back. That seemed like a great idea to me. Of course, I am saving up for a longarm (ha ha!) and I don't really want to dish out any more money. Since I am one of those old fashioned people who still hangs clothes on the line, I have loads of clothes pins. Seemed like the same kind of idea, so I gave it a try.

All in all, it didn't work too badly. The clips stayed on for the most part and, aside from them making the quilt a little heavy, I didn't have to worry about any kids running into the kitchen and stabbing themselves with pins. A win, win all around:)

And since it isn't too cold, or windy, today, I decided to try some new photo shoots, and settings. My new camera makes my quilts seem really bright. I found a beach setting and it is giving me some color back, yay! The little dog decided to walk directly across the quilt the second I laid it out. Thank goodness it is a dry day as well! Best keep the dogs in next time:)