I fell in love with a pattern in Melinda Bula’s Cutting Garden Quilts and knew I had to make it. As luck would have it, she ended up teaching the class for that very pattern in Lake Havasu City in January, 2012, so I signed up. Sadly, I didn’t enjoy the class at all for various reasons, but I came home and made the quilt anyway, following the directions — more or less — in the book. It’s made with fusible appliqué, and then it was supposed to be thread painted to make sure all of the pieces were permanently attached, but my thread painting ability isn’t so great, so I simply did lots and lots of echo quilting inside each piece.
After doing the echo quilting, there was a lot of negative space to fill. The directions said to do echo quilting there, but I’d had enough echo quilting by then, so I put in some large, flowing sprays of the machine-quilted feathers I love so much instead. Then I added some piping for added interest before binding the quilt. I didn’t think this one needed any borders at all.
I finished the quilt in May, 2012, and it measures 26″ x 21″.
Update! This quilt won second place in its category at our local guild’s quilt show in April, 2013.
In January, 2007, I had the chance to take a class from Bethany Reynolds. She was in Phoenix for Quilting in the Desert, and I just couldn’t miss that. Her quilt had five complete circles in it, but I made mine a little smaller by making four semi-circles and only one complete circle; I designed it in EQ6. It’s entirely machine pieced and machine quilted and measures roughly 60″ square. I finished it in June, 2007.
Here’s a closer view of the center circle:
Update: I entered this quilt in our local show in February, 2008, and it won a second prize! Here it is with its ribbon:
My two daughters and their families needed tree skirts, so I’ve finally gotten around to making them for them. I used the same pattern for both; it’s from Eleanor Burns’s Christmas at Bear’s Paw Ranch and was pretty easy to make, though I’ve never seen square tree skirts before. But these are the biggest ones I’ve ever seen! They measure about 51″ square, and they’d have been larger if I hadn’t made the borders narrower than specified. I used some of the same fabrics for the geese in each, but some are different to go with the different stripes I used for each skirt’s borders.
Both skirts were machine pieced and machine quilted. I used a neutral thread to stitch in the ditch along various lines in the border stripes, as well as along all of the sashings. Then I used variegated rayon thread in rich Christmas shades to make free-motion holly leaves and berries. One skirt has a garland of these leaves and berries arching over each flying goose, and the other has a long garland weaving through each row of geese. Here are a couple of details:
Both tree skirts were finished in March, 2005, in plenty of time for Christmas.
I made this wallhanging in 1999, since we thought at the time that we wouldn’t be spending Christmas at home. Huh? Let me explain. Since we weren’t going to be home, I didn’t want to put up my tree. However, I wanted something to look like a tree in order to get into a holiday mood. Hence, the idea of making this quilt was born! As it turned out, we did stay home, after all, so I ended up with this and the regular tree!
The quilt, machine pieced and machine quilted, is approximately 36″ by 44″ and comes from a pattern by Gail Abeloe (Back Porch Press). It fits pretty nearly perfectly into a little niche in one of the inside walls of my house.
The local quilt circle I belong to had a block exchange with a Christmas theme in October, 2003. We had to select our block patterns from a list and then made them in our choice of two sizes: 6″ finished or 12″ finished.
As you can see, I grouped sets of four of the 6″ blocks together and alternated those sets with the 12″ blocks. I had four blocks left over, so those became the cornerstones for the border. I machine quilted this with a motif of continuous-line five-pointed stars in a variegated thread — a mistake, since the colors melted into the fabrics. :S The quilt measures 47″ square and was finished at the end of July, 2004.
One winter I saw a lovely quilt made with a variety of embroidered trees — and I loved it! I immediately went to the digitizer’s site and bought the designs in order to make my own version. As soon as I’d finished ‘Tis the Season, I got busy with this quilt. I ended up buying sashing fabric three different times before finding one that I thought worked well! The quilt is machine embroidered and free-motion quilted on my Bernina 780. For the quilting, I used several different all-over fillers in the blocks, followed by circle-filled swags in the borders. I finished it in September, 2016, though I did go back later to add some crystals to it. The quilt measures approximately 26″ x 40″.
Blog posts: embroidery, continuing, quilted
This is not only appliqué; it’s also drappliqué! I took a class from Pam Holland at Quilt Camp in the Pines in July, 2005, and her technique combines machine appliqué with drawing on the fabric with special pens to make the fabric look the way we need it to look. The quilt is entirely machine appliquéed and quilted, measuring 19″ x 23″. I finished it in September, 2005. I didn’t actually do that much quilting, since the appliqué was combined with the quilting in the main part of the piece. The wide border is quilted in a stylized wave pattern.
And here is the photo that inspired the quilt:
This quilt went together so easily that it’s almost embarrassing! It measures 61″ x 57 1/2″, and it was the first I made from the Fat Quarter Quilts book. It’s machine pieced and quilted; I had a wonderful time doing the free-motion quilting on it! I used variegated thread in two different browns and a green to make the vines and leaves that are climbing up this “wall” of broken bricks.
It suddenly became obvious that our grandson Benjamin had outgrown his baby quilt and that I needed to make him a new one quickly! Fortunately, I remembered that I’d purchased and stashed a pre-printed I Spy panel several months before — just in case. To that center panel I added borders of black with red polka dots and binding of red with black polka dots. I even found flannel for the back in black with tiny red polka dots.
I used bright variegated thread to machine quilt around the printed motifs in the center and to do loops in the plain red border. The same thread was used to do more straight lines in the outer border. The quilt was ready in time for Benjamin’s third birthday in January, 2002, and measures 40 1/2″ x 48 1/2″.
This is the first baby quilt I ever made, and it’s also the first free-motion quilting I did. That’s pretty appropriate, I guess, since the quilt was intended for our first grandchild!
The quilt is approximately a yard wide and a yard long. This corresponds with an old tradition of giving a new baby a yard of cloth. The project was the result of a class in machine quilting, and it won a blue ribbon at our local county fair in 1998. Here’s a closeup of part of it:
And now for a photo of the quilt in use! Our beautiful grandson was born on January 13, 1999, at 12:32 PM. He weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces and was nineteen inches long. This picture was taken when Benjamin III (he was named for his daddy and his paternal grandfather) was just three days old! Isn’t he wonderful?
