Cosmic Shores Quilt

Cosmic Shores is finished at last, and I’m happy to be sharing it today! I made this quilt for the annual QuiltCon fabric challenge and I’m hopeful it will be given a spot in February’s show — but even if it doesn’t, I’m pleased to have it finished. There’s quite a story that goes with this quilt, so buckle up…

First, some context: I’ve spent 2022 thus far finishing a few UFOs, making tiny art, and working on patterns and tech editing, but this is my first original, start-to-finish make of 2022. Whoa. I’ve been mired in a bit of a creative funk for a good portion of this year, and I feel a bit of relief to be moving beyond that…at least I hope I am.

This quilt began when Jen Hewett, a fabulous printmaker and textile artist, shared her summer scarf design in her June email newsletter. The fabrics for the QuiltCon challenge had recently been announced, and noticed that the saturated colors and dark background had some similarities to the challenge palette. I also liked the different styles of circles, many of which reminded me of wheel/fan quilt blocks. Later that week, I sketched out a very rough idea on a post-it note — some sort of curved block layout, with two different sizes of blocks.

Once I had the initial sketch, I quickly jumped into Illustrator and began playing with different blocks in the dusty red, orange, light and dark muted blues, cream and dark gray Ruby+Bee solids required for the challenge. I went through several iterations with varying block sizes, as you can see in the examples above, and finally landed on a design I liked with small, medium, and one large oversized block in the upper right corner. (The final quilt changed a bit more even after that mockup, as I played with the color arrangement and moved a few blocks around.)

I was ready to begin, and the biggest hurdle in getting started was the sheer number of templates I had to make! Oof, it was a lot. (To answer a question I’ve already gotten, I will not be writing a pattern for this quilt and the number of templates required is a big reason why.) I needed multiple cutting templates, as well as multiple copies of foundation paper piecing templates for the checkerboard and spiky rings. I hate taping letter-sized sheets together so for the larger blocks, I had the templates printed at Staples.

I started making blocks at the end of June…then we had our house painted which threw everything in disarray, and then we were busy with summer activities, and then we went on vacation. By the time I got back to this project it was August, so I set a goal for myself of finishing the quilt by the end of that month.

Things were going really well! I loaded my finished quilt onto the longarm and quilted horizontal straight lines in two different thread colors — orange at the top, light blue at the bottom, and mixed in the middle.

When the quilt came off the longarm, it was just a tad wonky so I took the time to block it on my living room floor. I don’t block my quilts very often — I think the last one I blocked was Game Night a year ago — but sometimes it’s necessary and worth it! With the quilt blocked, it was ready for binding…and that’s when things took a turn for the frustratingly unexpected.

I thought I had checked the thread tension on my longarm when I got started, but I guess I didn’t look closely enough and suddenly, when I was up close and personal with the back as I started to attach the binding, I realized I’d had a pretty significant tension issue and the bobbin thread was loose and wavy. And it affected HALF OF THE QUILT.

I knew I would never be satisfied if I didn’t fix it, so after grouching around for a day, I slowly and tediously ripped the quilting out of the top half of the quilt, resulting in the lovely pile of thread you see above. SIGH.

I had already trimmed the quilt, but after consulting with a few friends I was able to load the quilt back onto the longarm by basting a strip of fabric to the top fo the quilt and attaching that plus the bottom edge of the quilt to the leaders. I didn’t have any overage remaining on the sides either, so I just carefully started each line of quilting in the seam allowance. It definitely wasn’t a perfect setup, but it was good enough and I was able to re-quilt the top half of the quilt without further pain.

Whew. It was quite the ordeal, and certainly a painful lesson learned about the perils of longarm thread tension. I have battled with tension issues for the entire time I’ve had my longarm, and I’m honestly not sure whether it is user error on my part or something going on with the machine itself (which I had serviced about a year ago). I’m planning to dedicate some time to testing various threads and tension settings soon in hopes of nailing things down a bit better. Wish me luck.

For now, I am very happy to have this quilt finished! I submitted it to QuiltCon earlier this week with the following artist statement:

Oranges above and blues below give the impression of an abstract seashore, while the spikes and swirls evoke stars in the night sky. This quilt began as a way to play with wheel/fan blocks, and ended by taking me on an unexpected longarm thread tension odyssey! After much joy followed by much frustration, I am happy to have escaped mostly unscathed but with many lessons learned for the future.

Fingers crossed that I’ll get to see it hanging in Atlanta early next year!

The stats:

• Quilt measures 62″ x 62″.
• All fabrics are Ruby + Bee solids by Windham Fabrics.
• Batting is Hobbs Heirloom Premium 80/20 cotton/poly.
• Pieced with Aurifil 50 wt thread in #2600 (dove gray).
• Quilted on my Handi Quilter Avante with Aurifil 50 wt thread in #2225 (salmon) and #2715 (robin’s egg) in the needle and coordinating Fil-Tec Magna-Glide pre-wound bobbins.