Brights on Whites

I picked up two clearanced kits from Connecting Threads a few years ago and combined them to make this queen sized quilt.

The colors were just so cheerful!  The blocks and sashing were unusual and I found the whole thing enchanting.  I left off any outer border and simply extended the sashing stones around the edge for a non-standard binding.

There was so much fabric left over (one of the benefits of buying kits from Connecting Threads) that I could piece a back from it all.  Sadly, I didn't center it as well as I'd hoped, but it's still pretty cute.

Magnifico white thread throughout for the quilting.  Mostly swirls, with the occasional flower to break it up.  No sashing strips were quilted, giving a grid effect more visible on the back than the front.

Binding on the straightaways wasn't too bad, but ugh! all those points!  Well worth it in the long run, but so tedious at the time.

Chilly Quilted Penguin

Chilly Quilted Penguin would be an excellent name for a rock band or eclectic coffee shop.

A friend told me the nursery was going to be done in penguins, which I just adore, so I had to make a penguin quilt for her baby.

I scanned the net for patterns and ideas, and from THIS quilt (Diana McClun and Laura Nownes) sketched up a pattern in EQ8.  My penguins don't look that much like their penguins, but their quilt is where my inspiration came from.

I made the beaks and feet from prairie points and left them floppy so there would be something to tug on.  The feet got some extra stitching to denote toes.

Quilting the quilt was fun and quick.  Asian wind/water for the sky, a large triangle meander for the ice, swirls for the belly feathers, and a heart for joy.

Magnifico thread in white for the shiny snowy appeal.

And to wrap it all up, a cute penguin print from about a decade ago.

Hunter's Star Finished

Originally inspired by this picture, this hunter's star quilt took about a year to make. The pieces were cut last winter and the top finished in the summer. Quilting didn't get moving until around Christmas 2015 and the binding was finished only a week or so ago.

I tried to make the frost shimmer with Magnifico (a Superior threads shiny polyester thread).  Up close it works great.  I still can't photograph stuff like that well.  I love love love the way that thread handles.  You take one look at the shininess and start sweating, thinking it's going to break every seven stitches, but I had no trouble at all with it.  Marvelous stuff.

Small pieces cut on the bias made these blocks challenging to work with, but a little starch and a little patience paid off.

Don't ask me why the dark star.

This quilt was sold before it was finished and will be winging it's way to the Windy City next week.  Sometimes it's hard to let them go.

Bloggers Quilt Festival May 2014

Double photobomb!

Here's my entry for the May 2014 round of the Bloggers Quilt Festival.  This quilt was made for my aunts to celebrate their marriage last July.  Quilting took far too long and it didn't get finished until just last month.

The greens were supposed to be sage, but they just aren't.  I tried to tone them down a bit by using grey/green and grey/blue threads.

The pattern is just a traditional Carpenter's Wheel block made large enough to be a quilt.

I was especially pleased with the Invisafil thread in the outer border.  Nice subtle texture and unlike many of the thin and shiny threads, didn't break all the time.  The rest of the quilting was done in various shades of green and plain white A&E tex 40 quilting cotton.

The snails and pebbles background fill worked well, but from time to time it got boring so I threw in a few easter eggs.

From any distance at all the quilting is almost invisible on the front.  But if you get up close...

...the details come out.

Using a little bit of green thread on the back gave it some character.

The center medallion got a monogram, well-wishes, and a traditional curved crosshatch background fill.  You should see the three foot long MDF curve template I made out in the shop.  Thumping it around on the quilt for about six hours while I worked around the intials was a hoot, I assure you.

If I had more time I would probably have embellished these letters more.

Scraps from the green batiks joined end to end made the binding.

Thanks for stopping by, feel free to say howdy in the comments.  I reply to all of them.  Enjoy the rest of the festival!

CQQ Part 4

I've got your turquoise, right here!

CQQ Part Three

Shiny bling is really hard to photograph!  Here's a bit of it.

CQQ Part Two

You won't really be able to see that color unless you click the picture for the zoom...What's that?  Not as much bling as you thought there'd be?  Just wait, there's more.

Boring Sashing Conversion

Beth whipped this up at the retreat we went to recently.  Nine blocks don't really make a whole quilt I told her.  So she added some area with very wide sashing (I practically FORCED her to make it really wide.  She has way more sense about color and proportion than I do and realized that sashing half as wide as the blocks was going to overwhelm the quilt.)  She snorted at it, tossed it across the table to me and said, "There's no way to make this pretty."  (Yes, it can be argued that it is very pretty even before quilting, but we're talking about the sensitivities of a color PRO, remember.)

"Heh.  Sure there is!"

First you stitch in the ditch around all the block elements. No problem. :)



Then you quilt a bunch of scribble roses all over the sashings. Ok, make two passes. One with a darkish pink, the other with a lighter shade. There. That wasn't so hard.



Still using the focus fabric as your guide, insert buttercups along the same path with the scribble roses. Wow. Those buttercups have tiny petals. But there. It's done.

Finally, go through the entire quilt again with a green thread. Make wee tiny calyxes (calices?), leaves, and stems along the floral path. Do it in 30 minute increments because your eyes are getting wierd. Phasing in and out of the universe as we know it wierd.

After just over a week of quilting on a small, donation quilt, there! It's quite pretty.

I do go a long way to win an argument, eh Beth?

Houston Quilt Festival

I know, everyone else has already posted fabulous pictures of the quilts on display. The winners were all breathtaking; so were most of the quilts that didn't even get a mention! The vendor booths were interesting - many of them had new tools and gadgets on display. There were lots of technique tutorials. The folk at Thimble Art were showing off their dimensional paper piecing technique, Fabric Fanatics had the best deals on beautiful batiks (some of which are pictured below!) big companies and individual entrepeneurs were side by side in booths. I bought some metallic thread for which I have high hopes, and found just the right blend of oranges and yellows in a thread for a top that's waiting in the queue; my buddy Beth and I spent a lot of time directing each other to various sights.

This is all completely normal.

What we did that's blogworthy this year is, we made a quilt.

That's right. We made a quilt while we were at the Houston show. You know how seeing all the beautiful quilts is well, at first it's just humbling, but then it makes you really want to get back home and get busy, right? We are both already aquainted with that feeling so we brought along fabrics for a donation quilt. We cut, pressed, sewed, (frog stitched :( ) and sewed some more. When we left Houston we left with an extra quilt top! I used the leftovers for a back and quilted it, and today Beth will be taking it home to sew on the binding. It was a most satisfying experience. We had plenty of spare time while we were there because we didn't have to pick up anyone else's dirty socks, cook dinner, help with vocabulary words or let the dogs in and out. We went with a simple rail fence block in a zigzag layout. almost (but not quite!) impossible to mess this up. I sewed on an entire pair of rows upside down and we didn't notice it until we were setting it out to admire the finished top. One bad seam in the whole top isn't too awful though.

I quilted it with a pointy, angular meander. It took almost no time. I've seen Beth sew binding. That's not going to take long either.