Transitions for a housewarming

This is one of my quilts, made for a relative, as a housewarming for his new place.  He moved in last March...as in 2012.  It was ready in December (yay, less than a year!!), but sadly I didn't get it delivered until a few weeks ago...so missed my self-imposed 1 year deadline.   

 This is a jelly roll quilt, with 4 fabrics added to the blocks.  If I recall correctly, the jelly roll was Coconut.  Choosing the additional fabrics for the blocks and the setting triangles was really hard...this quilt wanted to be a different color than I wanted it to be!  Fortunately I had some great help pulling fabrics at Along Came Quilting, (thanks Kim) and it turned out beautifully.

 It is a large lap quilt....because the recipient is 6'9".

 The borders got a Ferny-feather treatment, which was appropriate for the fabric, and also the recipient, who originally trained as a horticulturalist.

The batting is a soy/cotton blend.  I drew a different design on my whiteboard, over and over, got it down cold (or so I thought), but when I started stitching, these spirals are what came out of the machine, LOL.

Hit the link if you want to see two more Transitions quilts that I have quilted.  I enjoy seeing the same pattern in different fabrics and quilting treatments.

Gail's Batiki Argyle

My Batiki Argyle in the previous post was finished in January...I'm way behind on my blogging.  But, I thought I'd skip ahead and post this one, because I like seeing how different the same quilt can be, with different fabric choice and quilting. 

Gail saw the quilt I was making, and decided to make one as well.  She used 2 charm packs, and a few extra pieces from her scraps, and few of mine as well.  It was so much fun quilting it and spotting some of my stash in there.

Gail usually quilts her own on her domestic sewing machine, doing lovely jobs with them, but felt this one was a little larger than she wanted to tackle on her own. 

This was Gail's first pieced border, and she obviously followed Debbie Bailey's  pattern to a T, as her pieced border fit perfectly on the first try.  It was large enough at that point, so Gail didn't add an extra border.

Design wise, because of the pieced border, we decided to highlight that with some line dancing/continuous curves in the border, and a curvy all-over pattern in the center to counter the straight lines in the piecing.

To give an idea of part of my design process, here's one of the samples I sent Gail to choose from for specific designs, and the one she chose.  (I had two designs I liked equally so I made her choose). 

  Magnifico gold thread and wool batting.

 Gail bought a beautiful Stonehenge wide backing.  It shows the quilting off so nicely.

 One of the things I really love about my Innova is that, on vertical and horizontal planes, I can SID (Stitch In the Ditch) without using a ruler...which makes it more economical for my client.

 Isn't it yummy?

Gail usually gives away her quilts to family and friends, but I think she's keeping this one for herself.

Batiki Argyle

This quilt is a disappearing 4 patch, with a pieced border.  The pattern I used is from Debbie Bailey's blog And Sew Forth.

I really enjoy reading what Debbie is up too, I think when I started reading her blogs they were white water rafting, and since then she's moved to Paris.  And around all of that, she finds time to quilt!

Debbie's pattern called for use of charm packs (5" precut squares), but I was able to hit my stash for the required 5" squares, and I just bought the 2 background fabrics and the border.   Because I was using stash and not charm packs, I managed to do some strip piecing, which helped to speed things up.  I also added a row of blocks to make this bed-sized.

 Wool batting gives lovely definition, as well as warmth. 

I love the texture in this quilt!

Patty's Fat Quarter Frolic

This quilt is Patty's Fat Quarter Frolic.

Patty uses such interesting fabrics, so bright and colorful and patterned.  One of the really great things about longarm quilting is that I can see and quilt all sorts of beautiful quilts that I'd never have made myself.

If I recall correctly, she said some (or maybe all) of these fabrics were from a Ty Pennington line.

We used a grey Silco thread and freehand E's and 3's as an edge to edge design.

 I think my phone camera has real issues with depth of field.  Sigh...someday we WILL find the camera in the depths of the teenagers room :P

 The quilting gives a lovely texture to the quilt, and the grey is nice and calming.  At one point we had considered a turquoise thread, but Patty decided grey, and it was a good choice.

This large turquoise block just about fried my brain with all those irregular spaces and lines.

 The back of this quilt is just beautiful too.  I love that grey fabric.

This was quilted with Quilters Dream cotton batting.

And, because it is fun to see how different the same pattern can look with different fabrics, here is a link to Marilyn's Fat Quarter Frolic, if you are interested...

Thanks for visiting.

Square Dance

This is a disappearing 9-patch pattern, from a magazine--this pattern uses 1/2 of a jelly roll (2 1/2" strips). 

This quilt belongs will be a wall hanging in the office of the church.  It was fun, because in addition to using some jelly roll strips, we used scraps from the comfort quilts we make for people in the congregation, and from the Stoles made for the ministers last year.  There were many hands involved in making this quilt.

And I guess it was fun, as many of the quilters went on to make their own.  Some of the ladies made theirs entirely from scraps.  I enjoy seeing the same quilt in different fabrics...here's another Disappearing 9 patch if you want to see a comparison.

Gold Magnifico thread, wool batting.  Line dancing for the quilting.  It will be bound in the same dark navy as the tiny cornerstone squares.

And this time I had a picture of the quilt 'pre-quilting'.  It's a neat comparison.  So often I wish afterwards that I had one,  but by then its too late ;)

Snowflakes

This quilt belongs to Colleen.  It is a basic 9-patch set on point with fussy-cut alternating blocks.  She got the fabrics and pattern as a kit at Along Came Quilting a few years ago.

We decided to put feathers in the border, and a simple edge to edge design in the body of the quilt.  Used a silver Magnifico thread and wool batting, with a luxurious minkee backing.

 I apologize for the blurriness of the photos...they looked pretty good on my phone screen:)

 This quilt looks pretty good in my room, if you get tired of it Colleen :)

Nancy's Magic Tiles

This is a quilt that Nancy made for her son, Daniel.  She decided on Kathleen Bissett's Magic Tiles pattern, and then her son, who lives abroad, was going to be in the USA.  So, she called the quilt store there, described the pattern and her son. Daniel walked into the quilt store a few days later, and was astounded when they recognized him (but than again, how many very tall young men frequent quilt stores I wonder?).  He selected these vibrant fabrics, and brought them home to his Mom.

This is, I think, Nancy's 4th quilt, and certainly her largest so far.  It was lovely and square and laid so flat and nicely for quilting.

Nancy got the top done, then had her younger son lie on the couch, covered him with the quilt...but it didn't quite fit, so she added extra length to top and bottom, so by the time she was done, this couch quilt for her very tall son is the right size for a twin-bed. 

Again, my phone-camera is producing slightly wonky colours--and it's a long story about where my camera camera is, so I'm just making do with the slightly wonky colours for now.  This quilt is in lovely blues and greens.  We decided on a simple meander just to give some texture.

This picture above is the closest I got for colour.

 Nancy's son managed a surprise visit home for Christmas this year, but he didn't want to see the top, he was waiting until it was all finished. 

Those really are lovely greens, not yellows.  You'll just have to trust me :)

 This picture shows the lovely turquoise thread we used....Wonderfil Konfetti if I recall correctly.  The batting is Hobbs 80/20.

 And the quilting shows very nicely on the back as well.

Nancy got this quilt finished just in time to send it to Daniel in  New Zealand, hand couriered by friends who were going over on a vacation, and it arrived just in time for his birthday.

Stars Divided

This was my 2012 FQ challenge, Robyn put in the 4 Fat Quarters, and I had to make her a project.  It was the first time I had participated in the challenge (other than quilting prior projects). 

It was also my first attempt at a mini-quilt.  This one finixhed at 20x25, so the stars are 4".  Not too tiny, but the smallest I had worked with to date. 

First I made a practice block...

and I liked it, so then I cut into Robyns FQ's.  The pattern is Stars Divided by Quilts Remembered.

I added the blue in the stars, and some of the backgrounds...the brown, dark blue sashing, border fabric and one of the backgrounds were Robyns fabrics.     This pattern makes these stars without Y-seams (Yay!!), but the construction does cause some waste.  The piecing was fun, but I had even more fun with the quilting.

SID around the stars, some details in the stars, some ruler work in the sashing and border. 

 

Unfortunately, I never did  get proper pictures of the finished project.  This was just me goofing with my camera phone after I'd finished stitching the binding while waiting for my kids at one of their events.  I didn't take more pictures before I gave it to Robyn.

A greyscale photo is interesting too.  I'll have to remember to do that more often.

I got a few shots of the quilting from the back.

Looking forward to working on the 2013 challenge now :)

Mini-Stars Tablerunner

This was Colleen's FQ (fat quarter) challenge for our guild for 2012.  Michelle M (not me) is the lucky owner of this quilt.  The pattern is Judy Neimeyer's Mini-Stars Tablerunner.  Michelle supplied 4 FQs, and the challenge was for Colleen to make a finished product for Michelle.

I really had fun quilting this one.  My phone-camera, however, decided to do some really weird color things, so please ignore the odd colors in the first and third photo, and the weird blue streaks in some photos.