Madonna - Gammill.com

Pieced by Brittany Bowen Burton

Quilted by Natalia Bonner
Gammill Quilt Artist
Piece N Quilt

My Quilter’s Story by Natalia Bonner

Brittany Bowen Burton designed and pieced this gorgeous quilt. It started out as an improv quilt but turned into this beautiful representation of “The Madonna.” When Brittany brought me this gorgeous quilt and asked me to custom quilt it for her I immediately knew that I could have so much fun with the machine quilting!

I love machine quilting on solid fabrics. I can really bring a flat-pieced quilt top to life and give it awesome texture and detail. I used two layers of batting, Quilters Dream Poly Deluxe on the bottom and Quilters Dream Wool on the top. I did all of the machine quilting with So Fine! on the top and Bottom Line on the bobbin, both by Superior Threads.

Most of the time when it comes to custom machine quilting I look at my quilts for a long time and come up with ideas in my head. Then, I load the quilt on my Gammill and completely change my mind. This quilt was exactly like that. I planned to quilt more of an all over filler in the yellow background, but after I loaded it onto the machine, sideways, the pieced yellow background really started speaking to me. I knew that I had to quilt something different in each of those pieces in the top corner. Of course, I just went crazy from there.

The machine quilting is all free-motion or ruler work, I did use a straight and a curved ruler. In some places I chose to extend the machine quilting designs that I quilted in the darker fabrics into the yellow background. I love that it’s a subtle detail. There are also a couple of lines of long straight rows of diamonds in the background. I love the texture that I can create with that pattern, so I thought, why not add them in?

Brittany chose to enter the quilt into the improv category at QuiltCon 2017. Brittany and I were beyond words thrilled to find out at the awards ceremony that the beautiful quilt won “Best Framed Machine Quilting.”

Learn more about Natalia Bonner at http://www.pieceandquilt.com/.