Quilting Mountains

Detail, Mountain Seasons

 I'm working on a big quilt this week and hopefully I'll find some time to blog my in progress steps. In the meantime though, the subject of quilting mountains came up on my facebook page so I thought I'd share the same photos with you here.   This is the way I quilt mountains in my landscapes.  

Clicking on each picture will bring up a bigger image so you can see the quilting more easily.

Detail, Sunset on the Lake

 There are probably many ways to quilt mountains, but I usually do it this way.... I think of ridges. Even when using straight strips which can make  'blocky' mountains, I make natural somewhat curving down ridges.

I usually start on the outside of each shape and echo that shape in a squiggly way. Then I echo my echoes but not perfectly parallel.  

For mountains with more 'foreground' like in the Sunset detail, I pretend there are foothills and I just make an irregular upside down wide V  and echo that V in the same way.  You can see this pretty well on the deep purple/blue mountain on the right. 

Detail, Watchman

 The stitching isn't as easy to see in the above photograph, but I pretty much do the same kind of thing when I quilting mountains with vertical strips. 

Detail, Wyoming Sunrise

 Because this quilt just depicted the peaks of the mountains, I simply echo stitched - in a squiggly way - the shape of the mountains.  I didn't quilt over those skinny highlighting strips which was probably a mistake.  You can see a little awkwardness in that foreground mountain on the lower left.

And now for something completely different.....  

New quilt, in progress. 

I'm reworking my Blue Ridge Mountain Sunrise quilt - that quilt had been a more 'simple' project in my book (Lovely Landscape Quilts). I knew I could do better and make something like it for a show quilt. Sooooo.... this is what has been captivating my attention for the last week.  Eventually I'll show you some of the steps, my pattern, etc., etc.

Oh, I fixed that one blue 'breasty' looking mountain in the center. *Insert laughter*

I hope this blog has been helpful to you - comments welcome. Happy Quilting!