Quilting like a madwoman since somewhere around 1984!
My mother-in-law loved blue and yellow almost as much as I do! 🙂 She needed a runner to use on her coffee table to accent a vase, so I made this one for her.
The two end blocks are from a free pattern on Carol Doak’s web site, and the center block is from her book Mariner’s Compass Stars. The runner measures 17″ x 48″ and was completely machine pieced and machine quilted. I finished it in September, 2007, and gave it to my mother-in-law for Christmas.
I saw this quilt at the Houston show in 2017 and fell in love with it. I finished adding the crystals (the final step) in June, 2018. The quilt was designed by Jacqueline DeJonge and is paper pieced.
I quilted it with free-motion feathers and fillers, as well as some ruler work around the New York Beauty blocks and for the feather spines. The quilt measures 60″ x 60″.
In April, 2019, our local guild hosted its annual quilt show, and La Vie Est Belle earned an Honorable Mention!
This is a quilt I made for a very special former student’s first baby. It’s paper pieced from a pattern in Carol Doak’s book Easy Paper-Pieced Baby Quilts. It is completely machine pieced and quilted, and it measures approximately 36″ square. I finished it in December, 2008, just in time for the baby’s January birth.
Carol Doak posted a row by row quilt (one row each month) for her online group. It was supposed to be lap-quilt size, but I wanted a smaller version. I redrafted all of the rows at half-size and made my version. The finished quilt measures 20.5″ x 27.5″; I finished it in February, 2007. It’s machine quilted, with each row having a different motif, and the borders have stars, hearts and flowers.
Update: I entered this quilt into our local quilt show in February, 2008, and it won second prize in its category! Here it is with its ribbon:
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! 🙂
Once again, I found a paper-pieced dog pattern in Houston (this time in 2003) that I just couldn’t leave behind! Each dog is dreaming about something special: chasing a cat or a bird, chewing on a big bone, taking a ride in the car, curling up in a cozy house.
The quilt was maching pieced and appliquéed (satin stitch), and I outline quilted each dog and then did a large stipple in the background. It measures 13″ x 11″ and uses buttons for the dream items. I finished it in November, 2003. I also tried a new-to-me method of binding this one, but I think I’ll go back to my old method. 😉 The pattern was made by Patchwork Plus.
This is another of Linda Hibbert’s patterns. I made this as a retirement gift for my husband’s boss at his job supervising student teachers through the local university. This man, who was also my boss when I did the same job for a year, is a Doberman lover. Since I also used to have Dobermans and still love them, I thought a quilt to reflect that was appropriate. It is paper pieced and free-motion machine quilted. I used a variegated thread in the border, but it’s difficult to see. Here is the quilt:
This quiltlet measures 11.75″ square and was finished at the end of March, 2004.
This was a design begun during a quilters’ cruise onboard Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas in April-May, 2014. Carol Doak was one of the instructors for the cruise, and she designed the quilt, but I shrank the blocks from 6″ to 2″. It was, of course, paper pieced.
The quilting is mostly curved crosshatching, done by machine.
The quilt measures 16″ x 16″, and I finished it in May, 2014.
I’ve hadn’t been a paper piecer prior to these little quilts, but when I saw the patterns, I just couldn’t resist. I saw them first at the Houston Quilt Festival in 2002 and bought them to make “someday”. That day arrived in March, 2003, when I was looking for something small and quick to play with. I tried to make them to resemble our two dogs at the time, Dexter and Tuppence. In order to do that, I changed the coloring a little on the cocker spaniel pattern, something that’s easy enough to do. However, the all-black Dexter was more of a challenge. How do you make details show up when the coloring is the same? Specifically, how could I make his ear show against the rest of his black coat? I don’t know that I succeeded very well, but I can see it — in person, anyway! 😉 See if you can in the detail below.
Here’s my attempt at Dexter, who was a lab-chow mix and a real sweetheart.
And here’s a detail showing his head in a close-up. Can you see his ear? 😉
Now here’s the quilt portraying Tuppence, our little cocker who was an affectionate bundle of energy.
And here’s the detail of her head. You might be able to guess that she was red and white parti-colored.
Finally, here are the two dogs as they really looked. You can see more of them on their own pages on this site.
Each little quilt measures 10 1/4″ square, and I finished them the same month that they were started — March, 2003. They’re machine pieced and machine quilted. The patterns were made by Linda Hibbert. You can judge for yourself whether the dogs and the quilts look alike.
This is from a miniature pattern Carol Doak designed. I chose to do it in red, white and black, and it looked very “flame-like” to me when it was finished. I machine quilted it in a flame pattern with a variegated thread. It measures 12″ x 12″ and was finished in September, 2006.
