Rainbows and a Blooming Nine Patch

I understand that the blooming Nine Patch Quilt Pattern is an easy pattern to accomplish - but one that looks utterly beautiful. Well the next quilt in the pile from Andrea just brought rays of sunshine and spring to my world.

My new years resolution was to be braver with color. I meant this more of being brave with my thread colors when quilting as I have typically only used white or invisible threads in my early quilts.

Andrea's quilts are so full of color - I wanted to take a serious plunge into color. I decided to use Rainbows thread by Superior. These are an absolutely stunning selection of threads. They have a color change every 1 inch. I do have the Superior color charts at home so I was able to select threads that blended perfectly. The actual colors of the thread do differ from the photos online quite a bit - so the color charts are well worth their small investment. 

I did a swirly feathered medallion design in the middle. 

From the edges in I started with a sepertine line on the purple border ... into feathers ....

... into flowers & leaves ...

... did I mention how well then beautiful thread blended? ...

.... some more serpentine lines before merging into the feather medallion in the center.

When the sun shone on the quilt the glorious texture was revealed. 

Who needs a flower bed when you have this hanging in your garden?

The quilting process wasn't about its problems. Though I loved this thread and the ending result - it was really hard to use on Freddie. It kept breaking - so the initial progress was very frustrating. It led me on a crazy Google internet search into the thread to find tips on how to handle it (what did we do before Google?). This is how I handled the thread:

Tips on using Rainbow threads on your Handiquilter
- Increased my needle up to a 20 needle
- Loosen the tension on the top & on the bobbin case (Not too much though - I really spent some time playing with the tension to get it right - like 1/2 a day.......)
- Thoroughly cleaned, air dusted & oiled the machine
- I soaked the thread in water (yes - literally held it under a tap for a while) the water really seemed to help
- Don't go too fast

I feel like the thread frustration was worth the result in this case. I really hope that I get up the energy to use this thread again in future - it is SO beautiful even if it was initially a bit problematic.