I finally finished Nolan's graduation quilt. AKA the dragon quilt. I finished it a couple of weeks ago and took photos. However, I didn't pay attention to the settings on my camera and none of the photos turned out well. I've had to wait a couple of weekends for good weather to do another photo shoot. (It's too dark by the time I get home from work.)
This quilt makes lifetime finish number 36. It's the first (but not last) finish of 2020.
It took over a year from start to finish...longer if you count the research and design time I put in as well.
Nolan gave me some suggestions of what he wanted and I went from there. I found a free-for-my-use dragon image that I imported into my quilting software and traced. He wanted Celtic/rune letters as well as a dragon. I did some research and did not like the meaning behind the typical ones I found. So I used the rune letters from the How to Train Your Dragon movies to write his name. Nolan loved it.
This is the fourth full-sized quilt I have hand quilted. I spent 201 hours over nearly 7 months to quilt this one. I'm not sure why it took twice as long as the others. Maybe it was all the curves in the quilting. I chose not to pre-draw the quilting pattern. All the wavy lines around the dragon were drawn free hand as I got to the area. That was something completely outside of my comfort zone. I like patterns and uniformity. Making it up as I went was a new process. I was a bit nervous as I couldn't see the final product until I took it off the frame. I'm pleased with how it turned out.
This quilt has traditional patchwork piecing, foundation paper piecing (sewing by number), and hand applique. It challenged my quilting abilities. I enjoyed every step of the process.
Letters for Schultz.
Pepper photo bomb!
