Charmed Network

Creating a new design over the holidays and getting built in testers of the pattern at my design location was too good to be true. I had to take advantage of it! This past week I had to focus on getting this second version of Charmed Network finished.

A few notes about the design--the challenge to myself was to use a charm pack and stay within the fabric line for all fabrics selected. So, if you're thinking of doing this, you can buy the pattern on Craftsy and here is a guide to your fabric choices --get a charm pack of a line of fabric that you might be particularly fond of, choose a dark dark or a light light as the background and two contrasts to the background you have chosen. One more predominent (the magenta churn dash blocks in this first example) and one not so predominent (the blue network connectors in this first example). Consider medium to large motif fabrics, that have a mirrored repeating nature, for borders. It is a great way to show off some of your favorite fabrics within the line.

The first version that I made, using the 'Terrain' line of fabric by Kate Spain for MODA, I quilted with a simple 'bones stipple'. The design on its own, with the busy fabric, etc. especially when used as a utility quilt, seemed to carry itself enough to not need something custom. The picture below is from the backside.

The second version, tested with my own fabric selection but pieced mostly by my sister and finished by my mom over the holidays, used the "Eva" line of fabric by BasicGrey for Moda. This was fairly 'pink', but with the dark burgundy and bits of green it seems to still read pink! HA! but the burgundy really pops....my sister wanted something simple on the back, perhaps a blue and white stripe. Well, see below for what I found and I thought it needed something, so decided in the churndash blocks that I needed to do some special quilting. The pink rivers were quilted with a sort of water stipple to show the river movement.

Here are a few images of various details in the quilting.

Details of the border quilting. Freemotion curly swirls and outlines of the peacock like bird image when it worked.

This is the backside of the inner border quilting.

A few charm squares that are between the churndash blocks are on their own, so I freehanded a flower that kind of looked like the flower in the inner border.

I blewup the spade image from the inner border as large as I could on a printed piece of paper, and it just fit inside the churndash. Tracing this with a Pilot FriXion pen to give me a basic shape, I was able to then quilt this space. It is easier to see the quilting from the back. I hoped that it would create something that looked like a 'crest'. Maybe a name could be embroidered in the 'arch' of the handle of the spade. I used a purple 100 wt Invisafil thread on top, and black 100 wt Invisafil thread on the bottom. I didn't have any blue that would work, so thought just the thin black would work.

I bound it cutting the stripe fabric across the stripe to create more interest in the binding. Since I ended up with a stripe on the back, I figured regardless of color (it is dark) it would coordinate sufficiently with the back. I used Aurifil 50 wt black on top, 50 wt white in the bobbin.

Went outside to take my photos and it is RAINING! OH MY...ok, so this one will have to do strung up in the garage with my makeshift mechanism. Not possible to get good lighting or straight on, but close enough.

Feels good to have this finished. Back to customer quilts this week with several custom ones for Nelda King!

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