Quilting the Landscape Quilt

My inspiration for the quilt to remind you what it looks like

I put my quilt sandwich together this past week. That means I have added quilt batting and a backing fabric to my quilt top and am now ready to quilt it.

You might be asking why do we quilt the landscape or art quilt? Well, quilting was necessary to keep all the layers together when quilts were used as blankets on beds. The blankets were layered to give them warmth. Traditionally quilts were hand quilted. Some quilting was as easy as just pulling yarn through all the layers and then knotting it on each side. Usually quilting was done "in the ditch" which meant the stitches were hidden in the seam lines between the pieces. So the quilting pattern was just following the outline of the squares and triangles that made up the quilt pattern. Later, quilting took on its own design so that it enhanced the quilt. Quilters took great pride in precise hand stitching on their quilts.

Traditional quilt design where quilting would follow the squares and rectangles

Fancy quilting

On my landscape quilt, I use quilting to enhance the design as well. Instead of quilting by hand, I use my darning foot on my sewing machine and free-motion quilt. I will quilt around shapes to make them stand out or I will fill in an area with dense pattern to flatten it.

When I am quilting I have to consider thread colour in my top threads as well as thread colour in my bobbin. I usually use either black or white in my bobbin depending on the colour of the fabric I am using or the colour of the top thread. I will use a variety of colours in my top thread.

The first thing I did on the landscape quilt was "couch" a piece of yarn along the base of the rock where it meets the water's edge to define the rock from the reflection in the water. Couching is sewing a piece of yarn or piping to something using a zigzag stitch. Above you can see that it is a hairy piece of yarn that resembles moss.

The next thing was to quilt around prominent shapes such as the tree trunks so they would stand out. If you look closely you can see stitching lines on either side of the trunks.

Above I stitched around small bushes situated on the rock so they would stand out.

Then I stitched around all the trees with light blue thread in the sky area. Later I will fill in the sky with dense stitching to flatten it so it looks like the trees are closer to the viewer. I will do the same in the very dark areas under and behind the trees.

Here is the back of the quilt which shows how I quilted it so far. I used both black and white in the bobbin. The white was used in the sky and light rock areas and the black was used in the trees.

I'm very pleased with my progress so far. I can enter it into the show at any time this month before the 30th so, I'd like to move quite quickly with the quilting.