adventures book tour: Double Diamond Wedding Ring

QUILTER: Andrea Munro

QUILT: Double Diamond Wedding Ring

Tell us about yourself! What’s something people might not expect (or already know) about you? 

I am a stay at home mom of 4 and wife of 1.  I bought my longarm in 2015 and knew right away that I wanted to pursue custom quilting. It started out as a personal pursuit and has organically turned into something that I do for others as well.  I’ve also started teaching and am pretty excited about that!

Something that people may not already know about me is that I took up playing piano again this past year after literally not touching a piano for 20 years.  It was a lot of work on top of quilting, homeschooling, and life in general, but I was able to take my Grade 6 RCM exam in June so I was really excited to have been able to accomplish that.  A fun fact about me is that I don’t drink coffee – or any caffeine – which sometimes makes me feel super boring; but it’s just something I never started and now I stay away for health reasons…..

Can you provide some background on how you approach quilting customer quilts generally? What types of things do you typically consider?

Sure!  First of all, I like to see if there is a way that I can add any secondary designs to the quilt top.  Secondary design quilting is probably one of my favourite type of quilting designs to do. I define Secondary Design quilting as any design that is not obviously intended by the piecing.  When you add this type of quilting to a quilt top you are able to showcase the quilting without taking any attention away form the piecing. So that’s my preference – obviously it’s not always going to work for each quilt top, but that’s sort of the technique I used on the Double Diamond Wedding Ring.

When I’m working on my personal quilts I typically work backwards and choose a quilt pattern that I know I can add the quilting designs I want onto it rather than make a quilt top and try and fit certain quilting elements onto it. So I choose what I’m going to piece with how I’m going to quilt it already in mind. When a customer sends me a quilt I look to see if the piecing creates any secondary shapes.

With the Double Diamond Wedding Ring there weren’t any secondary shapes that popped out at me so I went ahead and created my own by adding the chevron stripes that run through the quilt.

                 

What influenced your quilting choices for this particular design? 

I loved the beautiful colours used in the piecing and knew that I didn’t want to detract from that so I chose to match my thread colour to the piecing. Also, some of the prints are busier than others so I chose to do less complicated designs on the busier prints where you can’t see them easily anyway and focus my time and energy where the quilting would be seen.  I also like to double batt all of my custom quilting projects.  I makes the quilting really ‘pop’ and gives almost a trapunto like effect.

Were there other ideas that came to mind? Are there any alternative quilting schemes you’d care to share? 

I didn’t save my sketches – which are somewhat notoriously ‘rough’.  Let’s just say my quilting skill doesn’t translate to pen & paper.  I always preface my quilting plan with a client with, “Now don’t be scared…….it will look much better than this once I quilt this out.”

Any specific tips or resources for our readers who might be struggling with how to quilt this (or other) designs?

I am a visual and hands on learner – so if you can take a hands on class that would be the ultimate best way to learn (IMO). I know it can be intimidating, but so worth it.  I took my first long arm class before I even had my long arm and was so scared to operate the long arm in front of the other ladies who were already quilters, but nobody laughed or threw things at me so it all worked out in the end!  I guess the second best after that would be an online class like Craftsy or something like that – those are a great resource as well since you can watch them over and over again.

What machine do you quilt on?

I quilt on an APQS Millennium (and I love her!)

How can our readers keep up with you on social media? (website, blog, instagram, etc.)

For now I am on Instagram and FB as Practical Dazzle.