Wednesday 28 March 2012

Yellow Brick Road

And here's another yellow brick road for the church.  These colors are fun.  My kids loved these fabrics, and were hoping we would get to keep this quilt, but we cannot.  I quilted it with a wavy greek key to try something new, and I think it turned out well.  I guess I'll have to wait and see what everyone else thinks.





Another take on the Disappearing 9-patch

I wanted to show this Disappearing 9-patch just as a contrast to this quilt, to show how the same pattern can look so different.  Same blocks, different layout and different fabric choices.  This quilt originated as a class sample from a class I was teaching at Needleworks.  There's a nice cozy flannel on the back, and it was quilted with a panto I won't use again, as I don't care for the look of the overlapping.



Wednesday 21 March 2012

First Official Customer Quilt

Patty's X-block quilt was the first customer quilt since starting mmm quilts.  She wanted a large meander, which I really enjoyed, for two reasons.  One, it was the first meander I've done on the Innova, as I've been busy practicing other things, and two, I could not effectively do a meander this large on my old short-arm set-up, without it being very linear.  And, of course, I enjoyed quilting this because Patty's piecing is precise, perfect and pressed.  OK, enough alliteration.

It doesn't really show against these blocks.  The quilt is perfectly flat and square, it's the optical illusion of the blocks that makes it look wavy.

(I wish I could figure out why these pictures are being turned, but in mean-time, just turn your head, LOL)



Wednesday 14 March 2012

Stoles

We have 2 new-to-us Ministers at our church, and so for the covenanting service in February, the quilting ministry group made them each a stole.  These came to me already 'enveloped' so were a little tricky to load and quilt, but I got it done.  This picture doesn't show it well, but the other half is kind of wrapped into the leader at a 90 deg. angle.

 The stoles are similar but different, so they each got a different quilting pattern.



 and if I learned more about blogger I'd maybe figure out why these next two pictures loaded upside down, or at least how to turn them


Tuesday 13 March 2012

Disappearing 9 Patch

This quilt sat, just like this, on my frame for 2 weeks, waiting for me to recover from the flu.  Poor lonely quilt.

  I am very happy to be well enough to quilt again.  This quilt originated as a fabric swap in my guild, Friends and Needles, plus we each added 10 additional fabrics of our own.  We used 1/2 WOF strips, to get more variety.  It has been fun to see how differently they all turned out.  The quilt was constructed as a Disappearing 9-patch.  The large squares finished at 2". 

I wasn't sure how I was going to quilt this, and then I saw Kathy's Oak Leaves quilt at Tamarack Shack, and knew that's what I wanted to do.  I'd been wanting to try some freehand continuous curve with my new machine.  Love the puffy little pillows that result. 
 There's a neat secondary pattern on the back too...
 I feathered the borders, but it doesn't show well on the front.

 I really love this border fabric.  I had bought all they had at the store, but then cut my borders a little too wide.   I was in luck, however, as my friend Gail had some of the same fabric left over from a project.  Thanks Gail.  It might be hard to give this one away.

 and  I SID'd (stitch in the ditch) the narrow inner border, because I still need SID practice...I'm getting better at 'in the ditch' instead of 'near the ditch'.
 This last picture is a better representation of the color of the backing.  It's a green that looks really nice with the top.

Sew-fine 403 thread top and bobbin, Legacy wool batting.  The quilt was 53x64 1/2 before quilting, 52x63 1/2 after quilting.