Modern Country in SIMPLY SOLIDS by Annie’s

Hello Friends, I hope you are doing well!  My Modern Country was returned to me amidst of all the chatter from you about feather quilting in my Learn to Machine Quilt online class giveaway post!  Perfect timing, eh?  Modern Country appears in Simply Solids, a newly released book by Annie’s.

[image source: Simply Solids, page 23]

Modern Country is inspired by primitive quilts that are so dearly loved by many quilters, and adapted with a modern flair in that the colors are brighter than the traditional primitive palette.  I used all solids from RJR’s Cotton Supreme Solids collection.  Click here to see the full range of fabrics.

Quilting was done with Aurifil Mako 50 Cotton threads (different colors) over Hobbs Tuscany Silk batting.  Some of you have asked about my thought process in deciding how/what to quilt.  I will take the opportunity here to share a little how I decided to quilt this banner.

So, here goes… looking at a quilt top that is made of entirely solids — my first thought is dense quilting that adds interesting texture to the quilt.  Deciding what dense quilting motif to quilt is strictly a matter of personal preference.  I happen to love feather quilting, like really really really love!  So, it’s feathers for me!

Next comes the question of whether to quilt marked or unmarked feathers.  Oftentimes in my case, I go with free-form and unmarked feathers because of my time constraint.  I often do not have more than 6-8 hours to quilt a quilt.  So, I almost always go for unmarked feathers. I decided to unevenly distribute the feather so that the eye is drawn to look at the various parts of the banner.  I also quilted straight lines in the mid sections of the side borders to break up the feathers a little, again, for visual effect.  And so, you have the completed banner in the following image.

[image source: Simply Solids, page 21]

Here are a few close-up shots of the quilting:

And here, you see close-ups of the birds with their respective sprig of berries.

I also took this super close-up shot of my quilting to show you why I like to quilt with Aurifil’s Mako 50 Cotton thread — I get virtually no thread building up despite stitching over some of the areas multiple times.  Click here to read more about my thoughts on threads.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you enjoyed looking at my Modern Country!  I am going back to work — on quilting feathers actually.  Talk about coincidence, eh? :)