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Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Norene's Fancy 9-Patch


Fancy quilting alert!  Norene made this lovely 9-patch quilt with scraps and a whole lot of white.  I love it.


And here's what I did to it.  It took a little searching to find the perfect design to fit all the nooks and crannies of the negative space, but I think I found a winner.


For each pass, I would quilt half of the design- the bottom- then once I got across to the end, I came back and did the top half.  Then I would do the same thing for the C2C colored 9-patches.  So there are very few starts and stops.  


For the border I did a feather.  The borders were a bit wavy, so the echoing helped out with that quite a bit.


I used white Glide thread throughout the whole quilt.


Can you tell I really like this one??  Makes me want to buy a bolt of white fabric and make a few of my own.  Because I've got enough scraps to do it :)

Friday, May 23, 2014

Oh Deere & DGS May


Jessica made yet another one of these Oh Deere! quilts as requested by a customer.  I bet she has gotten pretty efficient at this pattern, she's done it a dozen times already!  


But I haven't gotten tired of quilting it yet :)  Because I think just about any design goes with it.  It's contemporary yet nature-y, so I think you could quilt it either way.  Or a mix of the two, which is kind of the way this one went.  Feathers, leaves and swirls.


These are my blocks for do.Good Stitches Haven group for May.  Sara let us pick our own blocks to make into a sampler quilt.  She gave us a nice palate of colors to use- lime green, aqua, navy, red-violet, raspberry, mustard yellow- and solid white for background.  I thought I would try a new block that I've been wanting to attempt, but ended up staying in my comfort zone and doing all blocks that I have done before.  The first is called Christmas Star, the second a dresden plate, and the third bonus block is just a scrappy improv block I threw together.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Buggy Barn- Convoy


This Convoy Buggy Barn quilt was made by my Mom and given to my little nephew on his 2nd birthday.  He loved it! He laid on it with a big smile and started wiggling around.  It was pretty cute.  



Let's take a look at how I quilted it, shall we?  I quilted a different fill in each background and outlined each wheel on the outside and then did a little something in the centers.  On these trucks, I SID around the window and the other long pieces on the top and to the right, and left the main part of the truck as is.


The dump trucks needed a little bit of quilting, so each of those are a little different too.  I even 'loaded' a few of the trucks/loaders with rocks.  (like the one on the right)  For the HST rows, I did C2C in the green and alternated by row between pebbles and a straight meander.  



Beep Beep!


Quilting this one was pretty fun.  But since I loaded it the short way-right side up- it seemed that the convoy would never stop each time I advanced the quilt!  Mom has plans to make 2 more of these quilts for her other grandsons, so it's a good thing they are fun to quilt!


Monday, May 19, 2014

Zach's T-Shirt Quilt


Here we have a T-shirt quilt for a high school Grad: Zach.  Zach was very involved in several school and community activities, which shows in this quilt.  He is also attending a John Deere tech school in the fall, so there are plenty of tractors represented too!  Which my kiddo LOVED btw.  



My friend Sharon let me use her pounce pad tractor design.  It fit perfectly on this shirt.  I have never used one before, and it was so easy!  I don't have a pounce pad, so I had to use my chalk pencil and sketch along the design line.  Might have to look into getting some of these!


They used a high loft poly batting, so the quilting is really defined.  I like how my tractor tracks border worked out.  I have done it before, but had a hard time getting it to look good rounding the corner.  (you may be able to see in this quilt my son now owns.)  This time I decided to just stop at the seam line and start again in the other direction.  Much better.


I have quilted t-shirt quilts for his 2 older siblings where they displayed it at their graduation parties.  Only one more kid left!  I'm glad to have a little hand in this tradition.  Congrats Zach!


Friday, May 16, 2014

Scrappy Baby Quilt- a new variation


I made this baby quilt for a cousin who is expecting a baby girl.  This time I was really on the ball and gifted it before the little one arrived!  Weird huh?  So no names or initials were incorporated into this one.  I wanted to try something different than my normal scrappy baby quilt go-to.  (like this one, or this one, these two, or even this one for example.)  I was inspired by Vanessa Christensen's Ombre Dutchman quilt.  So I made my 10 inch improv-pieced blocks into large HST units and squared them up to 9.5 inches.  Then I laid them out into a flying geese block.  I really like how it turned out!


I don't know if you can tell this in the pictures, but I used a bright pink thread throughout the quilt.  Using a contrasting thread is pretty uncommon for me, but thought this would be a good candidate to try it out on.  Might as well keep going with the trying something different theme.


I quilted swirls in the white and a different design in each colored geese blocks. 


Yep, I'll definitely be doing this method again.  Because sometimes sashings are a drag to make.  It will be fun to try out different HST blocks.


The back I admit is pretty ugly!  I had some random strips I wanted to use up since most of them don't really go with the rest of my stash.  So the back is pretty...uh...interesting :)  

Monday, May 12, 2014

Amish Sampler Quilt


Luanne made this Amish sampler quilt.  Love the bold colors in this one!  Lots of custom work was the ticket here.  No way was an overall pattern going on this quilt.  


I had fun quilting this quilt.  I think this block is my favorite.


This quilt is about the fanciest quilting I'm capable of, just so you know.




I used a charcoal colored thread throughout the quilt.  It blended in just enough in the colored blocks, but still stood out a bit in the black.  If I'm going to put in the time and effort to custom quilt each block and border, I want to be able to see it!  (But not so bold to notice every little tiny mistake either.)


Plenty of borders and sashings to go around.  Feathers and figure 8's.


Ta Daa!  This quilt was a monster and took me quite a few naptimes to finish.  But I love how it turned out.  This was my first time with a quilt using black batting.  Since her back was solid black, it was a very wise choice on Luanne's part.  I had no issues with it at all, you just notice the lint buildup on your machine a lot more.  Thanks Luanne for entrusting me with your quilt!


Thursday, May 8, 2014

Norene's Pink Log Cabin Medallion


Norene made this cute log cabin quilt.


I tried out this flower medallion design in the negative space.  I think it turned out pretty neat!



For the log cabins, I did a geometric design, using the piecing as reference marks.  I forget which book I got that from, but it is probably Eva Larkin's.  

Happy Quilting!

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Pinwheel baby quilt


Jessica made another one of these adorable pinwheel baby quilts.  I quilted it similarly to the last one, but changed up the pinwheel block.  


I like it!


The spacer block.


Oooh.  The back.