New technique

I recently saw this photo of an amazing quilt. If I am reading the paper correctly, it says it was made by Karen Lambdin, border quilting inspired by a quilt called "Tree of Life" by Jan Hutchinson. A quick Google search found me photos of that quilt as well. (second and third photos) Someone correct me if any of that is inaccurate. I love it when it takes me a minute to figure out how someone did something, and these borders definitely did that! It is done entirely with quilting/trapunto, but it looks like an applique on top of pieced fabric. I have been wanting to try this technique ever since, and I found the perfect project to try it on, on a much simpler scale for now! (Keep scrolling :-) )

Close up of the border, pretty amazing!

This chickadee fabric was made to go with a particular quilt pattern, so there is lots of blank space around the birds. Usually there isn't enough space for me to get a whole greeting card in one piece of fabric, so I wanted to do something interesting with it. I decided to try that same technique, but much simpler. I drew a diamond grid, stitched the lines, then quilted densely in the spaces. All three of the last photos would work just how they are, although if I was just quilting the lines, I might use a straight stitch foot instead of free motion to make them a little straighter, ha! :-) It's hard to tell in the photo, but the one with the most quilting really makes the bird pop up. So fun!