Kaleidoscope Finish !

Around Christmas Ricky Tims was advertising his DVD on Kaleidoscope Quilts. He provided the video free on The Quilt Show for a weekend. I got busy and made my Christmas quilt using his technique.

It's been finished a while now, but I am just now showing it as my bee tried the techniques this week and I got this one out again.

Ricky has a reputation for cutting freehand but this technique is very exacting. It takes thought, drafting a pattern yourself, being very careful with color choice, cutting and sewing. Take very good care not to over handle the pieces as they are all bias edged. Take more care on laying them out on the design wall as they are easy to mix up. I did not fuss with angles I just enjoyed what showed up after cutting the mirror images.

I did a lot of straight line quilting in the center, but it doesn't show in the pictures well. It looks terrific though, and required a strong arm to twist and turn the quilt under the needle. I used metallic gold thread by YLI.
For the border quilting, I sketched out ribbons with poinsettias and holly leaves/berries on this scrap of paper.

I doubt you can see it in the pictures but I made ribbons first all the way around with the walking foot. Then did flowers and holly free motion again with the gold metallic thread in the top, and thin cotton DMC in the bobbin. It shimmers in person. BTW the snowflake you see here is silver metallic paint, and I had only a small piece left in my stash. I am actually happy I allowed myself to use it! It's really pretty.

 Can you see the poinsettia in the corner? I did not plan much, just started sewing to see what showed up. Each corner is slightly different. The think is, certain fabrics just don't allow you to see the quilting stitch well.

At the bee, I hung this up with the table runner made from the numerous scraps left from fussy cutting the segments. There is significant waste using this pattern. It is not hanging on it's sleeve so it looks wonky here, but it's just pinned badly on our wall.

The whole kt and kaboodle was made from stash except for the red with dot's inner border. That was on sale and I only wish I had been able to buy more. I finished the bolt at 1.5 yards. One can always find a use for red fabric with silly white dots, no??
Happy Christmas in March!
linking to among others...sewcanshe