Friday 27 May 2016

Vintage

This quilt was pieced by Kathleen S.  It's called Vintage from the book Simply Retro by Camille Roskelley  If you click on the link and scroll down a little, you can see Camille's Vintage quilt.

 This quilt is done in such soft pinks, I wanted an elegant and flowing quilting design = feathers.

 Here's a before (above) and after (below) of this gingham block.  The gingham reminded me of a dress my sister used to love when we were kids.

To add to the 'flowyness' (yes, I did just make up a word) of the quilting, the feathers rotate in different directions on alternate blocks.  I guess motion would be a good word to use if one wasn't into making up words LOL


 And as an added bonus, this is a two sided quilt.
 I think the quilting looks great on the back of the quilt too.    And I was so close to getting it centered.  To perfectly center a quilt backing, Vicki Welsh has done a great tutorial, but it involves a different loading procedure, so I just did some measuring and tried to get close with this one. 



And as a view into my designing process, this is one of the designs I was considering
I decided the quilt needed simpler, so went with double continuous curves and hooked feathers. 

Thursday 26 May 2016

Louise's flannel

This is Louise's quilt, and she gave me free rein.  I wanted a 'new' E2E design, and something fairly modern, so I dug out  Jodi Robinson's Modern Simplicty book and found this design.  I really like how she shows a design in blocks, odd shapes and as E2E.  I've used a similar design in blocks before, but wouldn't have thought to try it as an E2E I don't think.

It was perfect.

 I'm calling this a flannel quilt, mainly because I don't know the name of the pattern, and so don't know what else to call it.  The dark grey background is flannel.  The prints are an assortment of linens and quilting cotton, giving the quilt lots of textural interest.
I think another name could have  been stash quilt, as if I'm recalling correctly, Louise made it all from her stash.



Calendar Club

This is Colleen's Calendar Club quilt.  It has been 'aging' for a while, waiting for its turn to be quilted.  Colleen decided it's time had come, and it will be donated for the quilts for Fort McMurray .









photo from Erie Quilt Arts facebook page

Sandy's Sampler #3

This is the third and final quilt from Sandy's original queen size sampler.  This one, I believe, she is keeping for herself.  You can see the second one here, and the first one was quilted when I had a short-arm on a grace frame, and before I blogged, so there's no where to direct you.



Sandy asked for the quilting to be similar to her 2nd quilt, so that's what I did.


I was able to quilt all the blocks and sashing continuously except for this block
I tried to keep the quilting unifying, by only using a few shapes--u-turns, loops, continuous curves, herring bones (which are essentially loops), and some wavy lines.  




 I used long herringbones for the borders too, and really like how they turned out, with the curves from the sashing, it has a scalloped feel.
 And happily, Sandy chose a backing with one of my favorite properties--the quilting really shows up well. 
 I love the backs on a sampler like this--so interesting.   The blocks can look so different from the back, without the piecing lines and color cues.


and again, I'll share the photo of all 3 of Sandy's samplers.  I wish I had made more of an effort in taking this photo to get all the blocks of the middle quilt it--the photo only shows 9 of 12. 
There, I found a photo of the first one, with all blocks showing.  And feet from one of my kids....they're small, so I can tell the photo is quite old, I'd guess about 2010.

Simplicity 6 --Red and White

This is Yvonne's Simplicity quilt, and, as you may have guessed from the title of the post, I've been quilting a few of these.  This is the first one in just 3 fabrics, but I've another similar one to show soon.  I really like how Yvonne's layout is so different from the pattern layout.  You have to look closely to know that they're the same quilt. 

 I used the border fabric as my clue in the quilting design, and quilted all over echoed flowers
Yvonne chose a white polar fleece as the backing.  It worked really well, and is nice and soft, plus it had the features of my favourite backing type--it shows the quilting really well. 

A Quilt Called Wanda

 I guess I never got a picture of the whole quilt....or if I did it's lost in the (involuntary and surprise) Windows 10 upgrade somewhere---I'm still learning where to find my files.

 Lori pieced this quilt as a gift for her Sister-in-Law, and I love everything about it.  I love the fabrics, the piecing pattern, how soft it all is--both literally and in feeling.  The pattern is Wanda by Villa Rosa,
 and it's a jelly roll quilt.  

Lori didn't add the extra borders, she added some extra blocks. 

The color of the minkee doesn't show well here at all---it was a lovely soft creamy color, and I swear it was also the softest to touch I've ever used as backing. 
 I chose E's and 3's because to me this is a very elegant quilt, and I find that E's and 3's can be a very elegant quilting design. 
Lori got this as a kit at Along Came Quilting...and they're sold out, otherwise I'd be on my way there to buy this kit.  I love this quilt.

Marilyn's Butterflies


 If the perspective is a little weird, it's because I was taking these photos from under the quilt while it was in progress on the frame.
 I received this quilt with a request for butterflies for liven up the large green blocks.
I thought about a panto with butterflies for a while, but then I had a better (more fun) idea.   I printed out the butterfly template from Judi Madsen's book Quilting Wide Open Spaces and away I went.  I cut out the template, and as I quilted each row, I first laid out the template in random orientation and placement on each dark green/blue block.  I chalked around the template to trace the image, and then quilted the butterflies in that row.  Then, I quilted what I call a double bubble freehand edge to edge design in the rest of the row--giving the butterflies a fanciful flight path.



Notice the lighter blue area on the backing?  Marilyn was very clever here--the 60" wide minkee backing wasn't quite wide enough for the quilt, so she added a strip of cotton from the top of the quilt, and that became her label fabric. 

And isn't the pieced  checker board border fabulous?  

Each of the butterflies have 'unique' wings.  Many photos follow.  Quit scrolling whenever you've seen enough