Monday, October 7, 2013

Quilts

This beautiful quilt was made as a gift for a 50th wedding anniversary.

This quilt almost used up all of the space on my 12' frame. I love doing these big quilts, especially when it is pieced as meticulously as this one!

We chose an all-over leafy design called "Harvest Winds" I really enjoyed the way that this one turned out!
This next quilt is going to be a gift at a baby shower. We decided to put some custom work on this baby! Boy-o it sure jazzed up this quilt!
I outlined everything in clear thread to start, which made a huge difference!
Then I added some flowey lines in the sky and loops in the clouds. Then each of the animals got a different treatment. The lions got loops, the zebras got a geometric design...
and the giraffes got a stipple to mirror their puzzle pattern.
I'm heading on up to Portland tomorrow for the Machine Quilters Expo. I can't wait to learn some great new techniques and designs.
Have a great week, and happy quilting!

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Applique

Oh, how I love sharing quilts with all of you! I've got some more that I would like to share today. This one was made by Coleen. She designed the quilt herself and I think that it is just beautiful!!
Aren't those birds just beautiful? To go with the bird theme we decided to put the Plumage pattern on it.
 We decided to go with the light colored thread not only to blend into the background, but we didn't want the quilting to take away from the awesome birds and I really love how it decorated the plain green blocks.

This next quilt was a block of the month made by Becky.
This quilt was made with homespuns which is difficult to keep straight because it just loves to move all over the place, but I think it worked out very well. OH, and just in case you are wondering...yes...that is all hand applique. She did a wonderful job on it.
I had a little bit of fun with the sunflowers, putting some pebbling in the center of it.
I really enjoyed coming up with new ways to quilt the different items in this quilt. Here is a flower pot. I put a figure 8 type of pattern on the top and a wavy crosshatch in the center of the pot.
This was a very pretty part of the quilt.
I stitched in the ditch around all of the applique so that it popped out.
This watering can was one of my favorite parts...oh wait, did I already say that? I guess the whole quilt was my favorite part. Its such a beauty.
 
This next quilt was made by my mother-in-law Kathi. She handed it to me and said do what you want with it, just an all-over design will be fine. OK! Of course, I knew I had to do something different on it...all of the family was going to see it. So I had a little fun.


I went with a basic loopy design and wrote BOO a few times throughout the quilt.
But that still didn't seem like quite enough...so I added a few spider webs
And a huge spider!! I had fun working on this and playing with different things, I hope that she likes it too!
This next quilt was AMAZING. Betty worked on this quilt on and off for 10 years. She handed it to me and said "Do what you want". Wow, that's trust!
This quilt is huge! It is 105 X 105"! I put a piano key border treatment on the outer border, some feathers on the dark purple, and had some fun in the setting triangles.
Here are a couple of photos of the gorgeous flower basket blocks in the quilt.
A lot of the flowers and leaves were 3-d which posed a challenge to stitch in the ditch around the applique. I had to move a lot of it aside while I was stitching around them....and then it happened...something that I knew would happen eventually...I quilted through my finger. I broke that huge needle off in my finger. OUCH! And oh boy did that scare me! Luckily I was so frightened by it that I moved my finger back to me as quickly as possible and I didn't get even a drop of blood on this very white quilt, so I still call it a victory!
Ok I will share one more quilt with you in this post. This was made by a new quilter, Chris. She made two of them for her grandsons.
She decided to use a black minky on the back of the quilt and we chose my Fantasia pattern to quilt onto it. I love the way that the quilting pops out on the minky backings!
Well, I'd better get back to it! I am currently quilting my next Scrap Squad quilt for Quiltmaker Magazine. I can't wait to share this one with you. It is a color scheme that I have wanted to do for a long time, in fact I bought the border fabric over 3 years ago! Stay tuned! I will share the quilt when I can! In the meantime, I am heading up to Portland next week for Machine Quilters Expo and I can't wait!
Happy quilting!