Dreaming Big

Originally released in 2017, Hoffman Fabrics, "Dream Big is a digitally printed close up of a dahlia bloom. I picked up a panel last spring at The Mountain Quilt Fest. I chose the 'Teal' color way.

I've seen many examples of the this panel beautifully machine quilted all across the world. Australian blog friend, Vireya, did a stunning job of quilting hers back in 2018. Click the link to see the blog post detailing her process. She chose the 'Opal' color and added s few special things to her quilt.

My panel has been sitting around...waiting and waiting. 2019 was a non-productive quilting year. Lots of changes and some stagnation, uncertainty and activity. A year of opposite forces and new adventures. All the recent upheaval due to COVID-19 made me realize I need to send fabric thru the machine. Now. Anything. Just do it! This weekend has been wet, windy & raw - typical early Spring weather. So in between cooking, reading, cleaning, doing dishes, cooking some more (!), walking the dog, I layered the panel and started stitching. 

I'm not confident in my free hand machine quilting, being very rusty right now - YIKES!! I decided to stabilize the layers by outlining all of the petals first. Then, with lots more research and maybe a scrap practice machine quilting samplers, I'll embark on adding some texture to each petal.

I've also been doing some online window shopping with the thoughts to get a few more of these panels, quilt each one separately and then join them together in some kind of layout to make a bed size quilt. What that would look like will take some planning on paper. And I'm in no rush to have anything other than essential items shipped right now. Which means once I get this panel quilted, it will need to sit and rest for a bit and I need another quilt project.  I think I found just the project to add to the queue.