Extreme Quilting!

Well, I can check this off of my bucket list  . . .

 . . . and I enjoyed every minute.

You have heard about Extreme Sports, right?  After wrangling this heavy duty 15 pound quilt over, under and through my quilting frames and then North, South, East and West over the ironing table to pin the binding and then once again through my Bernina to stitch the binding--it dawned on me that this must be Extreme Quilting!  I have done lots of denim quilts but never one this large and never one that was backed with Cordura!  <-----Check it out!

I have some special friends that asked me if I could quilt Cordura with denim.  Um...since I had never heard of it, I didn't know. They sent a sample and I gave it a try a few months ago. No problem. She had been working on this massive denim top for a long time.   He told me it would be about 90"x 120."  Just right to fit inside an 8x10 tent or just make a great camping quilt in general.

I met them for lunch a few weeks ago and scribbled out his design plan right down to the orange thread.  He had a request for each corner:

1. His name
2. Old fashioned snowshoes
3. A canoe
4. Hiking Boots

When I have a bunch of ideas but no exact plan, I never know just how it will all turn out, or even how I will make it happen . . . until I have a few weeks to think it over.

So, Tuesday, when I sent a text to my friends letting them know I was working on their quilt, he asked me if I was "screaming" yet?  I replied, "No, but I am using up a extreme amount of chocolate!"

Here is what developed:

I needed a way to enlarge a letter-size clip art picture to roughly 24 x 24 inches.  I drew a one-inch grid over the picture and then drew a 3-inch grid on a large sheet of news print.  That way I could just enlarge the drawing block by block. Easy peasy.

Then I cut out the enlarged picture and used it to outline the design in chalk on the quilt top.
Here are the hiking boots  . . .

. . . and here they are after tracing the outline with school chalk.

After quilting.

Here they are on the back.  

Canoe

 Snowshoes

Name.

Each design faces out to the corner, so no matter how you have the quilt turned, as you face it, the emblems are right side up.

Since it was so massive, I decided to continue the theme by placing a 26" compass in the center.

Our first desire was to quilt a background with oak leaves and acorns, but it was too intricate for the heavy fabrics and seams. So, I tried for a pond water type of meander with a few swirls where the fish are jumping. 

I turned the back over to the front for a 1.5 inch self binding and used a open and sturdy variation of my Bernina's blanket stitch.

. . . and, I think the 3 of us made an extremely great team!