Love Calms the Seas - A blog for Spring!

Please vote for Love Calms the Seas for Viewers Choice Thanks

Please vote for Love Calms the Seas for best Large Quilt Thanks

Thanks must go out to Amy's Creative Side for hosting the Spring Bloggers Quilt Festival.  What a wonderful opportunity of joining blogs together and gathering a lot of magical eye candy.  I like to thank all of the sponsors and also all of the bloggers who are linking to make this a wonderful interactive festival such fun.

Completed Love Calms the Seas

Love Calms the Seas Quilt was made for my youngest daughter as she completed her final year at Secondary College. I planned to finish this so she could have it with her on her new journey in life at University, to have a little bit of home and me with her.

starting of the piecing and placement of colours

I decided to piece this on the machine using the freezer paper foundation method.  This really helped as it was a very large quilt.  In fact this is the largest quilt I have ever made measuring 93" x 96".  Initially it was to only have one heart in the centre, but my daughter loved it so much we decided to put four more hearts in the quilt.  I am so glad we did for I feel it is very balanced now.

Quilting the waves

I love to hand quilt so with Aurifil 28 wt thread, in a blue, green and a purple and a turquoise. and my John James needles quilting began.  I was using the storm at sea quilt block but as the quilting  flowed I decided this quilt really needed to be called 'love calms the seas'.  I quilted waves into the quilt with blue going one way and the green areas going the opposite direction.

another shot of the waves being quilted

after the waves are quilted ready to quilt the hearts

When it came to the quilting of the hearts it called for something different.  I felt like the waves needed to be calm within them, as my desire for her life ahead to be full of more calmness than stress.  I was quilting my love into this quilt, so she can forever have a hug from her mama bear.

starting the quilting on the centre heart

another heart in the midst of quilting

Label just had to be a purple heart

At last the label screamed to me to be a heart.  This quilt took me 18 months to make and another few months of planning and gathering fabrics.  Whilst my daughter had completed her first year of University before I finished it, she now has her quilt and loves it very much.  I am so glad I took the time to quilt it the way I did.

here she is hiding in my back garden

Thanks for reading my post and for voting for my quilt, I also have another quilt entered in the hand quilting section - Hand quilting 'Time Warp' and I would appreciate your vote over here also. 

Please enjoy the eye candy and be inspired,

Keep on quilting and quilting,

Wendy :)