Adding Ricci's Initial

It's been an extremely busy week of nonstop teaching and fighting an icky cold but I have managed to ease in some quality quilting time on Ricci's quilt. I love adding initials to some of my quilts and wanted to share this process with you.

In the beginning I added a small round coaster to the middle of this linen quilt to give the quilted hearts something to "attach" to but to also add Ricci's initial. I have several Dover books with old antique initials and chose one...enlarged it to the size I needed...traced it on Golden Threads paper with my quilt marking pen and pinned it to the quilt.

I chose my quilting threads which were Superior Threads' Bottom Line and So Fine. I chose several dark,medium and light threads and also changed my needle to a Microtex Sharp. I need a very small thin point to do this little work.

I very slowly and carefully quilted the initial through the paper and then tore and picked the paper away. I then went back and added different threads to bring the "R" to life.

I added micro-scribbling in the middle of the letter to give it shadow and depth. I have double gridwork in the background of the quilt and extended those lines through the middle of the coaster and quilted them into cathedral windows to bring the design from the middle of the hearts into the middle of the quilt, just on a smaller scale. I then micro-scribbled the very outside of the coaster.

I LOVE to bead my quilts and found the perfect itsy bitsy beige ones which I added to the initial. I plan on adding some freshwater pearls to the small cutwork holes that are in the coaster.

I'm almost DONE with this piece! I sprayed most of the blue out last night and it looks fantastic! I have about another hour's worth of scribbling to finish off the edges and then my next post will be showing how to square it up, bind and block. The last post will be showing you how I sign my quilts...I have a very special addition I'll be adding to this quilt and can't wait to share!