Originally Posted by
Barb in Louisiana
I thought the quilt itself was nice, but then I saw your quilting. Absolutely some of the most astonishing work I have ever seen. You are an absolute genius with a longarm. Someone has probably already asked these questions, but here goes.
How long did it take you to design the pattern for the quilting?
What did you get your ideas from?
How did you mark it on the black?
How many hours do you have in the quilting part?
If you had charged for the quilt, could you give an estimate?
Thank you Barb and everyone else for such nice comments.
Design: I can't even begin to tell you how many ideas I had and eliminated while designing the quilting for this. I started forming embryonic ideas for the quilting before I even started piecing it. I wanted this quilt to be heavily influenced by Mexican arts and once I finished the piecing I knew it had show potential so that meant some over the top quilting. I knew I didn't want it too feather heavy but did use some feathers. Keep in mind I did not work on this to the sole exclusion of everything else but I definitely drafted and redrafted and mulled over ideas for well over a year. Actual drafting time put into hours?? Hard to say. I would have to absolutely guess at it but I wouldn't be surprised if it was 100 hours and this does not count the many hours spent on line for inspiration. One thing I knew I wanted to incorporate into it was birds in some way.
99.99% of the ideas come from the net but not just quilting. In addition to quilting of birds I looked at images of leather tooling, Mexican tiles, Mayan hieroglyphs, Mexican folk art, graphic designs and pottery and even tissue boxes! (yes there can be some pretty interesting graphics on tissue boxes). Pinterest and google images are two of my main sources for ideas. Once you start saving pins Pinterest often finds other pins it thinks might interest you based on your saves. I love that about pinterest and it has made some excellent suggestions for me.
I used 3 different marking tools on the black. A wax free white transfer paper. Like Saral paper but in white. Fons and Porter white ceramic mechanical pencil and Roxanne white water soluble quilt marking pencil. I did not keep careful time but the marking alone took 30 to 40 hours. I have not yet removed all the marks. I did remove quite a bit as I went but the Roxanne marks require a bit of rubbing to get them to completely go away. Once I wash it for blocking I will know better how much trouble they will be. They may just all come out in the washer as my test scrap came clean with a thorough dunking and hand washing.
Hours in the quilt. I really should have kept much better track. Alas, I did not. I loaded it on the rack in early July and worked on it for almost every weekend since then. I missed a few weekends, here and there and when we went on vacation but then had several days after we got home from vacation but before I had to go back to work. Again, I really have to guesstimate based on that so I am thinking between 60 and 80 hours of quilting, possibly more.
I would not do this level of work for anyone but myself so I couldn't come up with an estimate of cost. I doubt anyone would want to pony up for so many hours of work that doesn't show on the quilt with all the drafts and drawings, the elimination and starting over. Not to mention all the marking involved.