Quilting like a madwoman since somewhere around 1984!
Our granddaughter was going to start preschool and needed a quilt for nap times, of course. I found a panel of a fairy and added borders before quilting it. Here’s the quilt:
I did a lot of free-motion quilting, outlining all of the motifs in the panel and adding some clouds and leaves in some empty spots. Then I quilted feathers all around the borders.
The quilt measures approximately 31.5″ x 50″, and I finished it in February, 2010.
This quilt was for our only granddaughter. 🙂 I’d purchased the fabric for this several years earlier, but it was too feminine for the four grandsons who arrived in the meantime. As soon as we found out that the next grandchild was to be a girl, I dug out the fabric and started the quilt. I machine pieced it and machine quilted it with lots of hearts and flowers. I finished it in February, 2007 (the baby was due in May <g>), and it measures approximately 39″ x 48″.
Here you can see some of the floral quilting.
Gabriella Jacquelyn arrived on May 1, 2007, weighing 5lbs 7oz. Here’s a picture of our new granddaughter at two weeks old, resting on her quilt:
I took a class in January, 2009, from Sharon Schamber on how to make various background stipple patterns. She’s such a good teacher! We got a good start on the piece in class, and I finished it at home shortly after that. The little quilt measures about 15″ square and is an excellent reference for future projects.
This is another quilt that came to be as a result of our guild’s challenge. We were to use an identifiable piece of a certain beautiful red batik (no problem there!), as well as a heart on the front of the quilt. The theme was to be heart’s desire. I had an idea for my entry in July, 2011, though the challenge wasn’t to be until January, 2012, so I went ahead and made it while my idea was fresh. I used a pattern from Carol Doak’s 300 Paper-Pieced Quilt Blocks (block #126), resizing the blocks to 3″. Then I transferred tiny photos of the faces of our family members to the center of eight of the nine hearts that would make up my quilt. The ninth heart has a plain center, on which I wrote Family in white. The sashing and cornerstones are 1/2″ wide, and the borders are 1.5″ wide, as are the corner blocks.
The quilting motifs, which I did by machine, were tiny white hearts on each side of the heart points, with red loops in the heart “bumps”, and the feathers I like so much in the borders.
The quilt measures 14″ x 14″, and I finished it in July, 2011. Update: The challenge competition was in January, 2012, and my quilt placed second in the paper-pieced category! 🙂
This is the second quilt I’ve made specifically for Mike. It started in a class with Jackie Robinson at Quilt Camp in the Pines in 2003; that’s where she taught the pattern for the top. I’ve made this one in what she calls a lap quilt size, though it’s the biggest lap quilt I’ve ever seen. 😉 It measures approximately 70″ x 87″! After I’d finished the top, it sat around for a long time while I debated how I was going to quilt it; I knew I wanted curves and that the curves would probably have to be feathers; but I was put off by the prospect of having to mark all of those feathers for quilting. However, Kathy Sandbach then taught a class (the Infinite Feather) at Quilt Camp in 2004, and that was what I needed. I now knew how to do feathers without all of the painful pre-marking. I quilted feathers in matching threads in almost every section of the quilt except for the parts that look like trees; those were quilted with a tree motif — sort of. 😉 I also did different motifs in two of the teal/turquoise sections. The cream log cabins have feathers in undulating rows; the aqua stars have feathered wreaths; the purple log cabins have rows of single feathers; the cream feathered star points have feathered sprays. The quilt was machine pieced and quilted, and I finished it in October, 2004. Here is the front:
And here are a couple of details of the back so you can see some of the quilting:
This is the third of the quilts I started at Quilt Camp in 2007. There are Baltimore Rosebuds tucked into the flower petals for interest, and the leaves are dimensional, satin stitched into place. As with the two quilts I made that same summer, this quilt was machine pieced and machine quilted, with some manipulating done by hand.
Here is a detail showing some of the quilting and a bit of the fabric manipulation in the pot:
This one measures 18 1/2″ x 28 1/2″, and I finished it in August, 2007.
Our nephew was married on June 22, 2002 — practically in the midst of the enormous forest fires raging in the White Mountains of Arizona. Still, many of our family were able to get there for the happy occasion, and I took the opportunity to make this little (22 1/2″ square) wall hanging as a memento and to welcome our new niece-in-law to the family. This was the first time I’d printed a photo onto fabric myself (the ones previous to this were all done professionally), and it was really fun to see the results! I was told that the couple is using green, tans and browns in their new home, so the colors of the quilt were chosen with that in mind. This piece was machine pieced and machine quilted, with very simple straight-line quilting. It was finished on July 6, 2002.
This Drunkard’s Path was made in a class with Lyn Mann at Quilt Camp in the Pines in 1999. Actually, that’s when I started the top, finishing it later that summer. However, I didn’t get around to machine quilting it until November, 2000! Now I use it as a decorative tablecloth on my dining room table. It really brightens up the room! This quilt also took third place in its category in our local show in 2001. Below you can see the quilt on the table and as a whole. It measures 46″ square.
After a machine appliqué class from Sharon Schamber, I used her technique to make this small quilt. It’s a gift intended for my eye doctor, who has gone above and beyond for the past few years to get my eyes to work in a more normal fashion. The dragon on the quilt came from a pattern by Carol Bruce, and I added double corded piping between the quilt and the binding. I machine quilted the piece using a variegated thread in shades of lavender and raspberry to do feathers, small pebbles and flowing lines.
Here is a close-up shot of some of the quilting:
The quilt measures approximately 23 1/2″ x 16 1/2″ and was finished in February, 2009.
This is a rather untraditional baby quilt, made for Benjamin’s brother, Dominic Easton. He was born right on his due date, April 9, 2001 — a very cooperative baby! He weighed 6 lbs., 15 oz., and was 19″ long. This is a plaid pattern I took from a pattern by Debbie Caffrey, and it’s machine pieced and machine quilted. The machine quilting is a combination of straight lines along the plaid lines and hearts in some of the plain squares. The border has a pattern of adjoining hearts. The quilt is approximately 44″ square.
Here’s a picture of part of the back, where you can see the border quilting if you try very hard and squint just right! 😉
And, finally, here is Dominic with his quilt.
