Sprinkles

 

Sprinkles.   This is a Jaybird Quilts pattern, which I increased the size of the pieces to make it lap sized rather than baby sized.    I made this for a young friend, who had completely worn out her existing quilt, which also had 6 pointed stars, and she really wanted 6 pointed stars again. .  

She had given her Mom and I some ideas as to her favorite colors and a bit of a color inspiration in the form of a poster, and her Mom did an amazing job of pulling colors from that poster

She also very much wanted a minkee backing, like the quilt I had made for her Mom.  

Stereo

Vicki made this Stereo quilt from a kit she bought at The Sugar Pine Company. 

 Lots of great fabrics in this quilt.   Because it was named Stereo, I thought of these waving lines as sound waves as I was quilting them.  I threw in a few u-turns and pearls here and there for interest.

 and a row of ribbon candy every once in a while also

 Vicki pieced her backing, and it shows the quilting nicely.

Science Fair

Jessie made this Science Fair quilt for a family member.    What is really neat is she used shirts from the Grandfather of the recipient, as a memory quilt.  She also asked for a wood grain quilting design, as the Grandfather had been a carpenter.

 it was quite knotty wood, as it turned out :P

 This Grandpa had very interesting clothing--not typical Grandpa shirts.

 This is such a lovely memory quilt.  I'm sure the recipient will love it.

Gravity Pillows

While Vicki was making her Gravity quilt, she was also carefully using the scraps to make pillows.  I think it may have been a suggestion with the pattern.  This is Vicki's photo of the pillows. 

 She sent me one big backing, which is a fabulous idea when you're doing small pieces like this, because it saves me loading time, which saves you money.

 I love how she managed the tints/shades of the fabrics so the lightest colors are on the lightest backgrounds.  Also, each pillow (and I knew exactly how I was going to quilt the centers from the moment she mentioned them to me) has a block of red triangles that can be read as a hexagon.  So, I turned those into a tumbling block.

 And, of course, the back is almost as rewarding as the front, but no-one will ever see the backs now that they are pillows.

Thanks Vicki, these were fun!

A quilt fit for an Engineering Student

My nephew was off to study Engineering this fall, so I made him a quilt fit for an Engineer!

The pattern is Varsity by Jaybird Quilts. 

I know I was sent a photo of the quilt on the bed in his dorm room, but I cannot find it now.  You'll just have to trust me that it looked good in there.  I think he'd just moved in, because the room was very tidy.

You may be wondering, what makes it the perfect quilt for a first year engineering student?   Aside from the pattern name, the fabrics, of course!  We have chemistry - formulas, organic diagrams and periodic table, physics, trigonometry, binary, simple math and even some Dr Who designs (or so my kids tell me--I thought they looked like astronomy drawings).

 My youngest figures her cousin can just lay on his bed and study from his quilt LOL

 I just hope it helps him feel loved and not alone while he's away from home.

And a nice green flannel on the back.    The color, once again, seems wrong on the picture below, but I love how the quilting looks on the back. 

Gravity

When my friend Vicki was looking for a modern block of the month, I was quick to suggest Gravity by Jaybird Quilts to her.  I figured it was a win for both of us--she'd get to piece and own the quilt, and I'd get to quilt one.

I think longarm quilters have so much fun with this quilt, because the block pieces are large enough to put a lot of details in, without it being too stiff or overly quilted.  The quilt is approx 100x100 to give you an idea of scale.

The benefit of taking photos is that, when looking back at them later, one might spot the area of quilting that was missed--I missed some echoing in the center hexagon in the red block above.  I will stick that back on the frame to fix that.  The good news is the six sided star shape I wanted to create in the red block is visible.

 I'm so glad Vicki chose a wool batting, it shows the quilting so well, and I think she'll like it as a winter quilt as well.

 There are 16 blocks--with 8 unique blocks, 2 of each, so I quilted each of the 8 differently, but using the same elements in each for unity.

The colors don't read true on my camera.  

 While each of the 8 blocks were quilted uniquely, all of the center hexagons in the very center blocks got the same treatment., again a unifying element. 

 Luckily for me, there are many finished Gravity quilts to look at on the internet, and so I was able to take some inspiration from those--I looked at quilts done by Tamarack Shack (Kathy), Quilting is my Bliss (Teresa) and Valerie's Threadtales (Valerie) .

I'm sure I saw others as well, but those are the ones I kept going back to look at again.  I didn't want to copy their work, but I sure took inspiration from them. 

 One of the things I really thought about was the background, and what to do there.  I was thinking about getting out the photos to start drawing, to see if I could put a stitched border all around the star when I saw a Gravity quilted by No Rules Quilting (Mary Dylke) and she had stitched a border all the way around.   Yay, it was possible.  And then I added her quilt to my inspiration list too.

When I did start to draw, I wasn't pleased with the 12 pointed star border, so I 'created' blocks by stitching 4 backgound diamonds the same, and thus created a 6 pointed star.  You really don't see it from the front, but from the back, it really shows.

First, here's a shot of the 'created' block and the border stitching from the front,

and the back.    The rays were something I'd seen on Kathy's Quilt (Tamarack Shack) and I really liked them, so incorporated them into my quilting as well.

 The thread was Invisafil Silver-Grey (I'm not sure the real name of that one), and while I generally find Invisafil 100 wt thread just melts into the fabric, it shows wonderfully on the front and back of this quilt.   The backing really is a true black, it just didn't photograph that way. 

I think the tough decision would be which way to face the quilt on the bed--it's quite reversible. 

Thanks Vicki, for letting me play with your Gravity quilt. 

and here's an unquilted photo