Meringue & Garden Peony by Yvonne Fuchs

We’ve had the honor of working with Yvonne Fuchs of Quilting Jetgirl for nearly 6 years, though she’s been using and sharing her love for Aurifil Threads for much longer. Yvonne’s patterns are impeccable and her background as an aerospace engineer has beautifully informed her approach to the craft. We love seeing each new project that she creates and have so much respect for the creative experimentation that she so generously shares with all of us. Today, we’re delighted to introduce her latest pattern release, Meringue, made available earlier today. Additionally, Yvonne has been kind enough to share a few top quilting tips to help makers confidently work through completing the quilt!

When Yvonne doodled the shapes that compose Meringue, she immediately thought of the toasted, swooping shapes on the top of a chocolate meringue pie. Meringue is the perfect pattern to use to explore value and have some curved piecing fun. The Meringue digital quilt pattern includes a “bonus quilt” that uses up the large leftover scraps from piecing Meringue to create the Garden Peony design.

Both quilts are offered in 3 sizes: baby, lap, and queen, and the pattern includes the needed curve piecing templates, a coloring page, a page for each quilt dedicated to detailed information on how the sample quilts were quilted, and quarter circle templates that Yvonne used to mark the quilting lines. 

Sizing / Finished Measurements
Baby: 36″ x 36″ (40″ x 40″ bonus quilt)
Lap: 72″ x 72″ (80″ x 80″ bonus quilt)
Queen: 96″ x 96″ (96″ x 96″ bonus quilt)

To celebrate the two-in-one pattern release, the Meringue digital quilt pattern is on sale for $12 in the Quilting Jetgirl pattern shop through Sunday, June 19th. Simply click on the button below.

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I’m excited to get to share some of my top tips for quilting with you today, so that you can confidently quilt your version of Meringue or tackle your next quilting project. I did all the quilting for Meringue on my domestic Juki TL-2200 QVP Mini with coordinating 50wt Aurifil thread. The pairings of Kona Cotton and Aurifil that I used are:

Kona Oyster – Aurifil 2000 (Light Sand)
Kona Mustard – Aurifil 2130 (Medium Butter)
Kona Ochre – Aurifil 2140 (Orange Mustard)
Kona Gold – Aurifil 2210 (Caramel)
Kona Spice – Aurifil 2350 (Copper)
Kona Brown – Aurifil 2360 (Chocolate)

My first tip is to remove any loose thread from the back of the quilt that may show through to the quilt front. After you have trimmed the loose threads, and when you are ready to baste your quilt, give your quilt top another press to make sure it is wrinkle free and the seams will lay as flat as possible. After pressing the quilt top, mark any reference quilting lines that you may need prior to basting your quilt. 

When I’m marking reference quilting lines, I use a Hera marker. To mark my lines, I lay my quilt top on top of the batting I will use and make sure that I’m working on top of a hard surface. The batting allows the quilt top to flex a bit and the hard surface lets the Hera marker do its job and create a nice, strong crease that is pretty long lasting. The Meringue quilt pattern includes a full page with details on my quilting plan for Meringue.

My second tip for successful quilting is to take your time basting the quilt sandwich. I personally pin baste my quilts because my husband and I are both smell and chemical sensitive, making spray basting not an option. There are two things to note about the way I like to pin baste:

1. I like to pin baste the batting to the backing outside of the quilt top. This is a great way to keep the backing fabric from shifting AND from flipping under to be accidentally quilted.
2. I rotate my basting pins. Every other pin is horizontal, and the ones in between are vertical. This is yet another way to keep the fabric from shifting.

To prepare for quilting, I suggest pre-winding a few bobbins. I always color match my bobbin thread to the thread I’m quilting on top, and the change in colors across the quilt backing is subtle, but something that I enjoy looking to see. I quilted Meringue from the center out; I started with the ½” spaced diagonal crosshatch quilting on Kona Brown using 50wt Aurifil 2360 (Chocolate). I quilted all the lines in one direction, leaving long tails at the beginning and end of each line, and then I knotted the threads and buried them in the quilt sandwich using a side threading needle before rotating the quilt to finish the quilting in the second direction. 

I did all of the quilting using the walking foot on my domestic Juki TL-2200 QVP Mini using a stitch length of 3.0 mm. When I am walking foot quilting, I set the speed control to its lowest setting and enjoy the slow, methodical progression. I like to listen to podcasts while I am quilting, so it’s something I tend to look forward to each day that I’m quilting a quilt as it gives me the opportunity to catch up on my favorite shows. In order to see the marked reference lines made with the Hera marker, I turned off the additional LED lighting that I added to the throat space of my machine and set up a standing floor lamp to cast light at an angle across the quilt top. Direct overhead lighting can really wash out the creased lines a Hera marker makes, and angled side lighting helps bring them into sharp relief.

I hope there was a tip or two here that you find new and useful in your quilting journey. There really is nothing more fun than bringing a quilt to life with Aurifil thread. Be sure to tag me on social media (@quiltingjetgirl) so that I can see your beautiful quilting progress. Happy quilting!

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ABOUT YVONNE
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Yvonne Fuchs is a Hawaii based Aurifil Aurifilosopher, passionate modern quilter, designer, and technical editor. Yvonne maintains her own blog called Quilting Jetgirl where she shares her quilts, tips and tutorials, and approach to quilting that is influenced by her aerospace engineering background. In her free time, Yvonne loves to hike, snorkel, and work on a 3-acre homestead with her husband.