Quilting like a madwoman since somewhere around 1984!
This is a small quilt (about 18.5″ x 21″) made to hang in my sewing room. The pattern is called Stitched with Love, by Camille Roskelley. I machine pieced and machine quilted it with a combination of ruler work and free motion swirls and feathers. I finished it in May, 2023.
Blog posts:New wall hanging, …a small finish
This quilt, which measures 58″ x 72″, was designed by Christina Cameli. It reminded me of the saguaros we used to see everywhere when we lived in southern Arizona, and my husband loved the picture of the design. I machine pieced and free-motion machine quilted it, using straight lines with jagged spines for the saguaro and swirls for the background. I added my usual piping next to the binding, and finished the last stitches in August, 2022.
Batting: Quilter’s Dream Bamboo
Blog posts: Saguaro, Saguaro, part 2, Saguaro quilt
The background fabric here is a white-on-white fabric with happily flitting dragonflies, which is where I got the name for the quilt. I thought the colorful blocks gave the dragonflies a sort of garden to play in.
The quilt is made of curvy snail’s trail blocks with sashing and inner borders of diamonds in rectangles and square-in-a-square blocks. The outer border is more of the dragonfly fabric, followed by multicolored corded piping and the white binding.
I quilted free-motion swirly motifs and feathers (just because I love feathers) to mimic the dragonflies playing, and I used free-motion ruler work in the outer border to give the “garden” a fence. The sashing creates a star where it comes together. Look just left of lower center of the detail picture.
The backing fabric is mainly white, but it’s covered in tiny speckles of all of the colors used in the quilt.
The quilt measures approximately 60″ x 60″ and was finished in August, 2021.
Blog posts about this quilt: A New Project, Snail’s Trail Blocks, The top is finished, New Quilting Tool, Dragonfly Playground
This quilt was designed by Brittany at Lo & Behold Stitchery, and I loved the graphic two-color design. This is the throw size, which measures 57″ x 71″. I began making it in February, 2020, finishing the piecing fairly soon. However, I then took a break during most of March, April and May before quilting it in June and finishing the label in early July. The quilt will be a gift.
I machine pieced the quilt and did free-motion quilting and ruler work to quilt it, placing a different motif in each section.
Blog posts about this quilt: beginning, blocks, quilting, finished.
This is a quilt designed by Ruth Ann Berry, and I couldn’t resist the cool optical illusion created with the colors. The piecing is done with 60° triangles, all of which are then assembled in rows before putting the rows together. I quilted the interlocking chains with straight lines to emphasize their movement and then did some fun motifs in the black background areas. The leftover colored fabrics were perfect for corded piping next to the binding. The quilt measures approximately 65″ x 48″, and I finished it in October, 2019, and sent it to a couple of friends.
Here are a couple of details of the quilting.
This was a very quick project, made from some printed linen motifs and framed with more linen. It’s the second time I’ve worked with linen from this French seller (l’Atelier d’Isabelle), who comes to the Houston Festival. The fabric is so lovely to work with — so soft and smooth!
The piece measures about 14″ square and was finished in December, 2018. I did very simple quilting, since I didn’t want to quilt inside the printed motifs. Instead, I simply stitched in the ditch around them and then added the swags and circles in the outer border before adding the piping and binding.
I came across a preprinted panel that I just loved; it was in colors I like, and it was a good size to use as a spring-time wall hanging in my dining area. I bought the panel and brought it home, only to find that I already had the perfect fabric for a border in my stash. It was meant to be! 😉 Since the panel didn’t need any piecing, this was a very quick project, and I finished it over Labor Day weekend (2003), working on it part-time. It’s free-motion machine quilted in rayon threads to match the various colors of the panel. It’s fairly small, measuring only about 28″ x 48 1/2″.
Our two daughters graduated from college with degrees in elementary education, one in December, 1996, and the other in May, 1997. I made these small (20″ x 20″) wall hangings for them to use in their classrooms. As usual for the time when I made these, they are machine pieced and hand quilted. They are identical except for the figures in the doorway of each school, figures taken from a toile fabric I had. The apples in the borders were essential for teachers, don’t you think? Since that time, while our elder daughter has continued as an outstanding middle-school math teacher, our younger daughter branched out into a different career in financial planning.
I saw a gorgeous quilt at my local quilt shop and fell in love with it. Since I had a gift certificate I’d won, I decided to buy the kit for this quilt, even though I don’t often do kits. The pattern was by June Pease for Red Rooster Fabrics, and it went together quite easily.
I machine appliquéed the circular pieces in the four corners, but everything else was simple piecing. For the machine quilting, I did a lot of outlining of the major motifs in those corners and in the center panel, using gold metallic thread to echo the gold tracery in the fabrics. The same gold thread made scallops in the various squares and rectangles of the borders; but I used black thread in the top and bottom portions of the center panel, doing swirls in the top section and leaves in the bottom. This is a detail of the center panel:
There is also corded piping between the outer border and the binding. I pieced, appliquéed and quilted this by machine, finishing in September, 2012. The quilt measures approximately 60″ x 70″.
I took another class from Freddy Moran when she came to our area in May, 2003. This time we made her Garden Party Ladies blocks, along with topiary trees. My ladies’ dressses are made from provençal fabrics I bought in Houston at the festival, and they’re on multicolored backgrounds. When I was quilting this, I decided to make the quilt a memento of my first trip to Houston and the wonderful time several quilter friends had while staying at the Ramada there. Seven of the dresses have the name of one of us “Ramada Gals”, and the remaining two have related information.Here’s the quilt:
This was machine pieced and machine quilted and measures 51 1/2″ x 46 1/2″. I finished it in late August, 2003 — just in time to get ready for the next Houston show! 😉 Starting on the left in the top row, the ladies/gals are: (row 1) Wendy/Frood, Ramada gals, IQF 2002 Houston; (row 2) Ally, Sandy in Henderson, Marilyn/Nurse Ratched; (row 3) Pat in VA, Kris in northern VA, Kathy Z./lurker.
For the label, I took a photo of one block and made the photo very pale, superimposing the text I wanted over that:
