Nutcracker Quilt

Hi Everyone,

This quilt by Emily M. is beautiful! Emily is a very talented quilter and her applique is amazing. Going into this quilt, I knew my goal was to make her applique stand out, literally. I really wanted a 3D trapunto effect. I double batted the quilt with 2 layers of Hobbs 80/20 batting. When I asked her if she had any specific ideas for the quilting, she said "snowflakes in the background". How fun is that! Snowflakes it is.

I used a light box (my homemade version) for the majority of the snowflakes but ended up making snowflake stencils to use as well.

The background fill around the snowflakes took me a couple tries. I planned everything on paper first. Sometimes it just looks different once sewn out on a quilt. Well, that was the case and I did not like Plan A. Stitches were ripped out and onto Plan B, which I did not like either....yes, ripped out those as well. So Plan C - echoing,,,,yep, liked that...score.

The snowflakes varied in size with some being very small so it was important to have the echoing pretty tight. I also included in the background fill some straight lines to break up the design and give the nutcrackers a path to walk on. I really like that look plus it broke up the busy background a little bit.

The Nutcrackers were not embellished with quilting which is Emily's preference. The stitching-in-the-ditch (SID) was kept to a minimum, which she also prefers.

Magnifico was used for the snowflakes, outlining the sashing, and in the border. MicroQuilter for the echoing, SID, and the ribbon candy design in the sashing. Both are from Superior Threads. Fil-Tec MagnaGlide Classic bobbins were used for the entire quilt.

Now onto the photos....

I really wanted the border and sashing to act like the frame and matting for the picture. With this in mind, the border was kept simple with straight lines following the fabric design. The off-white fabric in the border has a circular design in it which was just accentuated with quilting.