I felt so good to have two quilts completed last month. Here is the Arkansas Crossroads Quilt in Liberty Tana Lawn (78" x 78"). I started this quilt last summer. It's a quick to make project but I was not able to work on it continuously, so it took a long time to finish. Luckily towards the end of this project I got my Q20, which definitely speed up the process. I practiced quilting straight stitches with a ruler on my machine. I thought it was easy, but it wasn't until the 3rd or 4th border that I finally got the hang of it and not steering off my markings. Hence, the borders are kind of terrible. Fortunately, once the quilt was washed and shrunk, the imperfections diminished a lot and looked much better.
This is quite a memorable piece as the Liberty prints were purchased while I was on vacation in London (2014) and Tokyo (2016). Since Tana Lawn is more refined and thinner than regular quilting cotton, I chose white cotton sateen (from Fabricland) as background fabric and light blue Swiss cotton batiste for borders. The cotton batiste is delicate. I think I have to use this quilt with care...
I reserved this quilt for myself, and used luxuries Hobbs Tuscany Silk + Quilter's Dream Angel Request Cotton for batting (for warmth and softness). Now I have three quilts adorning my bed and keeping me warm: the Pheasant Feathers quilt, the Dresden Plates quilt, and this one.
Quilting was done with Aurifil cotton (50 weight) for the body and Hemingworth embroidery polyester thread (40 weight) for the border. By the way, I first tried Hemingworth in June (my Bernina Q20 dealer carries it) and felt in love. It's so silky and smooth, producing beautiful stitches on my machine when pairing with a size 100 needle.