Tutorials

Thursday, July 30, 2015

little twister


Norene made this twister quilt using up lots of scraps.


I wanted to do something different than her other twister quilts, but still ended up doing corner-to-corner in the pinwheels. That is just the simplest and easiest way to custom quilt them and still travel across and back without any stops that I could come up with. But I tried pebbles in the white this time. 


I think it turned out pretty cute.


twisting!


Maybe you can see the quilting design on the back. Maybe.

Friday, July 24, 2015

Alyce's Baby Quilt, DGS May


Alyce made this baby quilt for one of her clients.


The white bricks are minky and requested no quilting in them. Swirls everywhere else!


These were my blocks for DGS May. We used solids to make a sampler quilt inspired by Moda Modern Building Blocks. Wanna see the quilt? She's got the top together already. It's pretty fabulous!

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Carols Scrappy HST quilt


Carol--the queen of scrap quilts--made this quilt.


I quilted an all-over super swirl/feather.  An Angela Walters design.


Thanks Carol!

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Lost City : {don't do what I did}




It's not very often I share an 'in process' picture, but I goofed up majorly on this one, so I'm sharing in hopes that you won't make the same mistake. And just for your entertainment too.  




Teresa made this beautiful quilt 'Lost City' in Christmas fabrics. Lots of negative space to think about here. After much deliberation, I decided on a fancy design, marked it out and got to work. I quilted the first part -the two shaggy moutains on the bottom, then advanced the quilt to do the next white area. Then rolled it back to fill in the backgrounds and realized I had made a big mistake.


way too much extra fabric below! Imagine rolling up a magazine from the spine about halfway then putting a few staples into it. When you unroll it, it will not lay flat. The same thing can happen with quilts.  This was going to be too much for me to try to work in, so I had to rip it out.



2 hours later all my stitches were gone from the top part of the quilt. I unzipped it from my leaders and laid it on the floor and smoothed it out as best I could. A good 1.5 inches difference!


I pinned the layers together across the top, put it back on the longarm and stitched the top back down in it's new shifted position. Then I re-quilted the top part and from then on it was smooth sailing.


Here it is all finished!


I c2c'd around the jagged mountains...


...and filled in with swirls. Then with red, green and white variegated thread I filled in the red and green areas with a holly leaf design.



To find the center of the design, first I drew a straight line along the points-top and bottom. Then I measured across and then drew another line through the center- about 5 inches from the sides.  Then I laid out my cut out curved shapes and played around with them until I came up with this design. The length in this section was too long for 2 curved shapes, but not long enough for 3. So I ended up putting them towards the corners and filled the leftover gap with a square shape.


Ta DAA!


Thursday, July 2, 2015

Danielle's T-Shirt Quilt


Danielle just graduated high school and made this T-shirt quilt as a 4-H project.



I used a bright pink thread all over this one--her back was solid hot pink too. I just filled in with swirls and added a few details in the big blank spaces. (Pretty proud of that good lookin feather!)


The 'P' block was part of an elementary school project and so her blanket stitches were of that quality. So I made sure they were secure by quilting them on to stay for good.


Her zebra-striped border got a zebra-striped treatment as well.  Danielle loves her quilt and has also made a matching pillow too. She can't wait to use them at college this fall.

Thanks for the fun quilt Danielle!  Looking forward to seeing how it does at the county fair.