Quilting like a madwoman since somewhere around 1984!
I fell in love with a sketch in a magazine and drafted this quilt from that. I finished it in 1990, machine piecing and hand quilting it. I’d never done eight-pointed stars before, so the centers were a bit “hilly” until they were quilted. But the quilt won Best of Show at our county fair! This one measures 43 1/2″ x 35″.
A very small (about 14 1/4″ square) wall hanging, this was made for our niece’s wedding in 1996. This one also was the first I made using QuiltPro software to design and lay out the project. What fun! I machine pieced and hand quilted this one, too.
This is another project from Quilt Camp in the Pines (1999). It’s the result of a class with Gail Garber, who taught us how to draft and make this pattern. It’s machine pieced and hand quilted, and I left it small in order to hang it in a small spot in my kitchen.
This is the first large quilt I made. It is a Grandmother’s Fan pattern set in love rings, or rings radiating out from the center.It is in shades of lavender, because my husband’s favorite color is purple. Each machine-pieced fan block is hand quilted with hearts, and the whole thing was lap quilted, following Georgia Bonesteel’s ideas. The quilt was finished in early 1988, over two years after I began it, and is big enough to drop to the floor on a queen-sized bed, measuring 95″ x 114″. Unfortunately, it’s seen some hard use in the past few years and is now in pretty bad condition — it didn’t help that the fabrics weren’t the best quality! Lesson learned: always get the best fabrics possible.
I finally finished quilting this project at the end of December, 1999. This is the first somewhat larger (51 1/2″ x 65 1/2″) quilt that I’d designed and laid out using QuiltPro. What a difference in ease of drafting and figuring! The blue and white color scheme is a cool, refreshing look. I used blocks from the QP library, but I designed the border myself, basing it on one in an Eleanor Burns book. It’s machine pieced and hand quilted. There’s a sort of visual trick in this sampler, as it appears that there is a sashing between the blocks. However, the dark blue “sashing” is really a cross in the center of each block.
In July, 2001, I took some classes at Quilt Camp in the Pines. This was my fourth year there, and it gets better every time! I had two days of classes with Sharyn Craig, one of which taught us a technique to make LeMoyne Stars and their set-in seams all but painless. I also had a two-day class with Judy Mathieson. In that one, we learned to draft any size and shape of Mariner’s Compass, as well as curved flying geese to surround the compasses. I wanted to make an oval compass, and I also wanted to use some of those wonderful LeMoyne Stars with it. This quilt is the result of that idea. The quilt is entirely machine pieced and hand quilted.
You can see the quilting better in the close-up below; I did partial compasses in each of the large triangular areas between the narrow navy border and the stars, some simple shapes to accent the compass and the stars, plumes between the flying geese and the narrow border, small feathered sprays between each star, and a large feathered vine in the outer border. I finished it in May of 2002, and it measures 51″ x 57″.
In April, 2003, I entered this quilt in our local quilt show, where it took second place in its category! Here it is all dressed up with its ribbon:
Have you noticed yet that I seemed to spend a lot of time at Quilt Camp in the Pines? 😉 Sadly, it has closed. This is the result of yet another class there. I’ve always been intimidated by hand appliqué. I tried it a couple of times with less than wonderful results, so it was with great trepidation that I signed up for a class in Celtic hand appliqué, taught by Nancy Chong at camp in 2004. However, I think I’ve finally found a version of hand appliqué that I like and that I can do at least passably well!
This is hand appliquéed and the hand quilting echoes the appliqué motifs both in the “ditch” and 1/4″ away. Here’s a close-up of the quilting:
It measures 13.25″ x 47″ (tip to tip) and was finished in June, 2005.
This is a very small wallhanging (about 14″ square) that I made as a beginner. I liked the pattern of the saguaro cactus, since we had so many of them near where we lived at the time. I machine pieced and hand quilted this.
After seeing Eleanor Burns’ technique on PBS, I figured that this was worth a try. It was finally completed in 1994, two and a half years after I started it! It really wasn’t because I didn’t want to finish, though. First, I had to take a break of several months’ duration when I hurt my back and the doctor wouldn’t let me hunch over my hoop. I had just recovered from that when I literally took flight on a wet floor and broke my tailbone. I’ve never mastered the art of quilting while standing up! This one was also machine pieced and hand quilted, and it’s 60″ square.
I made this wallhanging to keep from freezing in our former home! Directly over the chair where I prefered to do my hand quilting, there was a vent for the evaporative cooler. That was nice in the summer, but in the winter the cold winds came through the vent with a vengeance. This piece covered the vent in the winter so that the room stayed warmer and I stayed comfortable. This Drunkard’s Path variation was machine pieced and hand quilted and is only 28 1/2″ x 17 1/2″.
