The Fire Quilt is FINISHED

**My giveaway is still open! Okay, here you go. It's time for picture overload with this quilt! My quilt holders were all at work or on vacation, so I don't have a really good pic of the entire quilt yet. Maybe later in the week? The bottom of the quilt has entirely faded into the shadows so I'll apologize for that as it makes the rest look weirdly proportioned.

2014 Fire in Pateros Quilt
Things Will Never Be the Same

I have to be patient and wait until my family has time help me though. Meanwhile, I thought you might want to see some stitching detail as it really made the quilt so much better. At least to me. You might think it's an odd quilt with or without the stitching and I won't judge you for that. lol

Stitching detail to the left

I ended up using very light colors of Perle cotton on most of the quilt. So surprising as I usually would think to use a bright or contrasting color. I would try out about three or four colors before finding the 'right' look on almost every single panel, stitching and then pulling the entire thread out and starting over. It was very frustrating as it took a long time for me to feel like I was 'getting' what the quilt required. At one point I was almost in tears thinking I was clearly wasting my time making the effort to hand quilt this monster! Anyway, the primary colors of the stitching are a very light silvery gray, a light multi-colored blue, a med-light green and and med-light blue. Go figure--the only strong colors were just a touch of red and black thread in very tiny areas of the quilt!

Stitching detail to the right

In the end, I decided that the texture was what was needed, not the color as more color just seemed to busy things up. Plenty of that with this quilt already! There was absolutely no marking done on this quilt before I stitched. It's all eyeballed and a naturally uneven style of stitching, although I stitched along the line of the plaid behind the 'Pateros' letters etc. It just seemed that this quilt needed the human touch more than precisely measured stitching lines.

What the quilt is all about

Honestly, it was really difficult to decide how and where to add the stitching. I almost had a panic attack over that part until I just did what I always do. Get the quilt into a hoop and start stitching something! The point of stitching is to add depth and texture to a quilt, draw your eye in or out, right? I finally went with an echo quilting around the vague looking flower in the center {why I was attempting to use a floor hoop} and then outlined the inside of each of the baskets. On each side panel, I stitched with a red thread just outside each 'spark' or ember and then used the light silvery gray thread to stitch concentric circles until they ran into each other--but not overlapping. I didn't get it all stitched quite as smoothly as possible where they butted up against each other, but there was only so much I was willing to be fussy about. Seriously, the stitching could have taken months if I had decided to be particular about every single detail!

Middle detail

I do think the quiet look of the stitching was needed to fully bring it to life. It's hard to have an unbiased opinion about something I've poured so much of myself into though! I feel immense relief to have it finished and yet, when I laid it out on the floor to view {and lets be honest, critique as well}, I felt so much numbness that I couldn't quite take it in properly. It almost looked like a stranger to me, and here it had taken up so many hours of my time since last October!

Lower left side

 My husband insisted we show it to my parents immediately and they seemed truly touched by the quilt. They spent quite a bit of time trying to capture all the details, asking questions as they looked over it. Showing them helps me to feel a tiny bit less nervous about putting it out there before the community. It also clarifies how emotional this quilt could be for others.*gulp  I'm really hopeful there will be other quilts with a similar idea! It would be very interesting to view different perspectives of the same theme and also take the pressure off of mine.....

Can never quite get the entire bottom of quilt

I've been gathering all the quilts I intend to put in the show this weekend. It's hard to narrow it down to the four or five I generally enter, especially since last years quilt show was cancelled! So far I've narrowed it down to these six quilts, but I could change my mind.

A stack of quilts for the local quilt show

In gathering quilts together, I realized that hmm.... I haven't put labels on anything unless it was given away for oh, maybe two years? Bad girl.

Simple labels

I did my usual and used a piece of muslin with simple wording. Even on the fire quilt. I feel like the details are mine and as far as others are concerned, it's more important that they interpret the details in their own way and from their own experiences? Looks like I got the date wrong on the Fire quilt, but luckily all I have to do is add a one in front of the three! Lovely to get the guilt of not adding labels to my quilts done and over with though. One more thing checked off the list! My quilt is done. I can hardly believe it......