Pressure Creates Diamonds…

Sometimes there are crazy weeks in the studio…. I occasionally get behind on custom quilting and have to put in big days to catch up. Especially when I have a specific deadline. I recently had one of those weeks. I mentioned to a friend about putting myself under so much pressure and his reply was, “Pressure creates diamonds”.

So, I’ll just be over here creating diamonds… lol Which is not far from the truth with the quilt I’m sharing today…

This stunning quilt is made by my lovely client Beryl. She is gifting it to a family member for a special celebration. I know I’d be thrilled to receive such a wonderful gift!!

Beryl really liked the quilting on the original quilt made by Tula Pink and quilted by Angela Walters. I had my work cut out for me… lol

Armed with a blurry image of the original, I went about quilting the coloured sections with matching thread colours… so many colours…. and then I designed some similar shapes to the original with template plastic to use in the outer border areas. Using my trusty disappearing purple marker and curved rulers I started quilting the border.

Quilting an intense custom like this is quite tough on my body. I spent almost 50 hours quilting this quilt. I often get asked how I can spend so much time standing there quilting. Well, it’s a process. I try to break it down into sections and only do what I have scheduled for that day. Sometimes all goes to plan, sometimes not… Quite often, if you were a fly on the wall, you would see me busting out some pretty bad choreography while singing even worse to keep myself moving and motivated… lol

Watching this quilt come to life as the texture changed was so exciting!! I really was creating a diamond!!

Please enjoy the gallery of pics below showing part of my process and the beautiful texture I created on this wonderful quilt.

Happy Quilting!

Designing the ogee shape and using the template to trace the design onto the quilt…