Noah's Ark Quilt

I am onto the next project, the Noah's Ark Quilt made by the mother of a friend of mine.  When I first saw this quilt, I thought it was so darn cute and deserved some TLC. This applique quilt would have been a lot of work to put together. It was purchased as a pattern many moons ago and was finished just recently. I started this last week thinking that this is going to take me a very long time, but to my surprise it is coming along much faster than I thought.

The space I have on the HQ Capri 18 makes this a joy to quilt. I have got a lot of room with the side extensions which take the bulk of the heaviness of the quilt. I finished outlining the Noah's block in no time at all. The only hassle was that I used different colours of Invisafil to do the outlining for the most unobtrusive look to further enhance the bold shapes, but the worst is over now. Many of the other animals I can outline with the off white thread.

There are a few issues with this quilt...it is not entirely straight and I have got some fullness in some of the blocks, hence I am starting from the middle out to take in some of the fullness.

 

The elephant in particular has an alarming amount of background fabric in there. Initially I thought that I would do loops in the background but I am now thinking that I maybe will do a mix of meander and loops. I have found in the past that meandering is a good filler if you want to shift some fullness around. Mind you, as I go along I find that I am changing my original ideas so this might change still. At the moment I am still doing the outlining of all the shapes after having finished all the ditch quilting. Found another block today that has excess background fabric in there and will have to think carefully about the filler's scale to make this less obvious. 

Look at the giraffe...how cute is that!

I am really enjoying this as I do not usually do a lot of applique, so this is a real novelty. In terms of finishing it off I am thinking of using Aurifil 50/2 to fill the background areas and some minor embellishments in the bigger blocks to even out the quilting. Some of the sashings can be quilted down with simple Ribbon Candy which will distract from slightly not so straight seams. The idea will be to just notice the texture. However, I am also mindful not to 'over-quilt' this as I do not think that it needs it. The cuteness will speak for itself. Will even be able to do some ruler work in those yellow scallop sashings by using the Multi Clamshell ruler to emphasize the shapes (at least that is the idea at present). Not sure about the border yet, maybe a simple line design or just some wavy lines. We shall see...

Very curious on how this will turn out.

Karin