Dresden Plate with a Jelly Roll

June 23, 2019 Cowtown Quilts2 Comments

Making a Dresden Plate quilt was on my Bucket List (the mental list of the many, many quilts I want to try before I die). Problem is that I really am trying to use fabric I already have. I’m bad about buying jelly rolls, because I figure I can easily make something without having to cut all those strips. But, they sit in my studio.

So, for this quilt, I decided to use one of my Riley Blake jelly rolls. I don’t know if you can see or not, but there are 20 points on these Dresden Plates. Twenty-two rolls came with the set, but I left 2 of them out, thinking I could use them in the border somewhere. But then I didn’t. Funny how as you are making a quilt, your journey takes you down different paths than you had originally intended. Anyhow, 20 strips… what size ruler do I need? A circle is 360 degrees. Divide 360 by 20 strips, and you will need an 18 degree Dresden ruler or template.

I wanted big blocks, so I extended a bit beyond what the template showed for where I should cut the tip end. I would be folding the strip lengthwise and sewing that top end to make a tip when it’s folded back, so it wouldn’t be missed when it’s tucked to the back. Missouri Star Quilt Company has a tutorial on how to make the plates here.

I finally finished it and tried some different quilting techniques on it. Those who know me, know that I try to make each quilt unique and add special touches. And, I’ve done those all freehand. I do not have a computer for my machine… yet. I am saving my pennies… it’s on my bucket list. 😉 But, I have a couple of the quilting designs on this quilt digitized and available for those who DO have a computer for your quilting machine.

The Crosshatching frame inside the block is available at Legacy Quilting.

The Eyelet Lace border design is also available at Legacy Quilting.

I wasn’t sure what fabric to use for the binding. I love using striped fabric for binding, and my friend, Tina, showed me some striped fabric that would be perfect for this quilt. It picked up that color of blue and the red. But… I ended up just using what I had and repeated that 1/2″ blue border. Saving my pennies…

For those of you who don’t know, I am no longer quilting for hire. The arthritis in my spine won out. So, now I am doing a few other things. One of them is digitizing machine quilting designs. Yes, I can do that for other people’s designs and have done that. My hope is that this will eventually lead me to getting a computer for my machine. Maybe then, I can think about quilting for hire again. I don’t know. That’s a lot of money and a long way off.

A couple of things I’ve done lately is cut my own extension table to fit into my sewing machine table. I ordered an insert 8 months ago, but have not gotten it yet. Yes, I’ve called the shop several times. I finally gave up and made my own. It’s not pretty. I still need to paint it white. But, it feels so much better to be able to spread out the fabric to be sewn without it catching on the edge of my machine.

Also, Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival was Father’s Day weekend. A quilt that I had quilted for Joan won 2nd place in Viewer’s Choice. It’s a really cute scene of Mom taking care of her baby, so I can see why people liked it. The pattern is called “Love from Above” by Charley Harper. You can buy it here.

I was surprised at the quilting. I thought I hadn’t done a good job on it, but time passing gives you a new view – it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. But then, the lighting was very complimentary to the quilting great as it bounced off the trees and tall grasses that were stitched into her quilt.

What was really cool is that both Joan and I got a ribbon for her quilt.

The next Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival will be in 2021. Their website is http://kcrqf.com. This year they did an awesome job meeting the needs of so many quilters. Check out their site and try to make it next time!

Square Peg in a Round Hole

May 18, 2018May 18, 2018 Cowtown QuiltsLeave a comment

Reposted from my other site.

Susan inherited this quilt top from her dad and step-mom. You can obviously see that the design flows into kind of a “sweep”. But, to me, it looked like it could have been a Native American design. The design is merely different colored squares sewn together into an interesting design.

Susan already had the PERFECT thread for this quilt. The colors matched perfectly. When I got it home and threaded the machine and put the first stitch into the quilt, I realized it was thicker than any thread I’ve used. And, I was worried. It took some coaxing to get the thread to go through the quilt layers, but once I got it going it worked like a charm…and didn’t break, not once!

I’m glad Susan decided on a Native American quilting design. And, you know what? That thick thread REALLY showed off the design in the light-colored border. And, the batik border fabric is a wonderful companion to the quilting design and Susan’s thread. Edge-to-Edge quilting used the wavy lines and the stepping stones under the sun in the border design.

I don’t remember ever getting the chance to quilt a Native American design into a quilt, so this was a lot of fun to do. If you’re wondering where to find the border design, I took one of Meadowlyon Designs’ pantographs (named Modern Southwest) that you can find here. Their pantograph is 10 1/2″ tall, but the border of Susan’s quilt was 7 inches, I think. So, what I did was make a smaller copy of one repetition in the pantograph. I then traced it onto Golden Threads Quilting Paper (you can buy it from their website and other stores) and pinned it to the quilt top. I wanted a cornerstone, so I took the bird , enlarged it in different sizes to find the size that worked best and then traced it onto the quilting paper as well and then stitched through the quilting paper. In the past, I’ve used vellum, tracing paper, Press ‘n Seal, etc for marking quilts. But, I had this on hand and it was just sitting on the shelf, so I thought I’d try it. I actually really like it. The paper is a soft yellow, which blends with lots of colors, believe it or not. When you pull the paper off, it doesn’t leave as much paper behind, and the paper isn’t a bright white. Judge for yourself if the end product (quilting shown in the pictures above) turned out okay.

I said earlier that Susan inherited this quilt top from her dad and step-mom. Well, here’s something you don’t realize you need or would like to have until you get it. They left their quilt tops in “kits” with batting, thread, and backing included on many of the quilts; ready to be quilted. And, check out this batting! I was floored. How cool is that! The batting is marked so I know which way to load it (you need more from roller to roller than you do side to side, because the rollers will use more batting – you can read more about that in my blog post “Oops! Please Add More Batting!“).

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I have a tip for loading quilt backing. I like to load backing fabric so the selvages attach to the rollers. The reason I like to do that is because the width (weft) of the fabric has a little more stretch than the length (warp) of the fabric. When I load the backing fabric to the canvas of the rollers, the fabric will stretch some. It stretches even more if I load the quilt with the width going side to side rather than roller to roller – that produces a “waistline”, as I call it, on the backing fabric. See how the top of the fabric in this picture is stretched more? That’s because it is attached to the roller canvas. The rest is not attached to anything yet. I lay batting on top of the backing fabric and then stitch a straight line across the top of the batting so that I can get the edge of the quilt top straight. I then baste the top down. After that, I will check to make sure the sides of the quilt top are straight and will stitch it down. AFTER it’s stitched down, I attach stretchy clamps to the sides of the backing fabric to hold it taut – that’s what helps keep wrinkles out of the backing fabric, where you can’t see it as you roll the quilt. So, what will happen is the backing fabric will have more of an “hourglass figure” if I load the backing with the width (weft) of the fabric going side to side than it will if I load the backing with the length (warp) of the fabric going side to side. And, the selvages have the extra thickness in its weave, so that adds to the strength where it’s attached to the roller canvas. The difference it makes for the quilt maker is that if there’s a seam down the back, it might not end up straight.

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One of the best parts of my job is the variety of quilt tops and quilting designs that I get to work with each day. I learn something new with each one. I had a lot of fun with this one.

To the Moon and Back

May 18, 2018January 27, 2021 Cowtown Quilts2 Comments

Reposted from my other site

This is another quilt I should have put up on my design wall before quilting it, because the colors and the pattern are striking.

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Kathy called this her Universe quilt. It has the 4 quadrants in colors. Do you see the circles of color in the blues down in the lower left? Those look like planets, too, and all the mottled batiks in the borders look, to me, like an Aurora Borealis. So, how would you quilt this?

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The colors are so magnificent, that it’s hard to see the quilting, but I decided to stitch a sun into the upper right hand (yellow) corner with the 9 planets circling around it. The orbiting circles are anything but perfect. I hand drew them on with chalk and then stitched following the chalk lines.

In the purple down in the lower right is where I put Earth and its circling moon. Can you see it? The moon’s orbit is elliptical, so maybe if you find that semi-sideways oval, you’ll see the big circle inside, which is Earth. I also drew the Big and Little Dipper with the North Star to the lower left of Earth. Of course, my ADD brain struggled with which way to put those stars (they’re not in correct proportion anyway)…as I am looking at them on the quilt? Or as I would look at them if I were on Earth? I also put shooting stars and meteors in the quilt, but you can’t see them here. The backing on the quilt did a good job of hiding them, too, which I’m always glad for, because my pea brain talks smack to me about my quilting abilities.

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This particular quilt was a good example of some of the strategies I used for getting a quilt squared up as it rolls on the frame for the quilting machine. And, since you can’t see the quilting too much, I thought I’d add some tips here.

First off, this quilt has lots of straight lines. I use those lines to guide me to getting the quilt straight. I’ll explain the tape measure in a bit, but for now, take a look at the lower edge of the picture. That’s where the lower roller bar lies. I use the lines in the quilt to help me gauge whether or not the quilt is straight going across.

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I’m sure I’ve showed you before the laser level I use to make sure the lines are straight as well.

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I used to use these white clips on the rear roller bar to help me with placement of blocks and borders as I quilted, but, unless you find a way to make them stay put, they roll and move. By the way, if you look closely at the edges of the quilt top, you will see a line of basting on the batting. There are 3 roller bars on my machine’s frame. The backing fabric is attached to 2 rollers; one at the bottom and one above this black roller you see in the picture below. That roller is used to keep the fabric in place at it rolls. So, first, I attach the backing fabric to the canvases that are attached to those 2 rollers. Then, I lay the batting on top of the backing fabric. I use my channel locks to stitch a straight line across the top of the batting – it helps to have a dark thread for this so you can see it better. That is my guide for where to butt the quilt top fabric up against. I then pin the quilt top fabric in place and then stitch it down about 1/4 inch along the edge. I’d like to make it 1/8 inch, but I’m just not that good.

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As for the tape measure, I use that as a guide for where to stitch the sides in place. When I get the top stitched down, I use my laser level to tell me where to butt the sides up to and then stitch the sides down to about 12 inches from the top. Then I see where the sides hit the tape measure and write those numbers down. I use those numbers for placement of the rest of the quilt along the sides.

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A machine quilter’s job involves a lot more than just quilting. The above tips are just a sampling of the many things we do when we work on your quilt.

A Woodland Christmas… by Joan

June 10, 2015June 10, 2015 Cowtown Quilts2 Comments

I figured I’d better get this on here while I’ve got the chance. I’ve been busy lately working on things for my booth at the Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival, which starts next Friday, by the way. And, I will continue being busy working on more stuff for the next week. This was the last customer quilt I was able to work on before the quilt show. Joan always lets me play and put whatever I want on her quilts. It’s a very dangerous tactic, you know.

So, let’s show you a full shot of the quilt first before I get into the details of the quilting.

Now, how on earth would YOU quilt this? My first concern was the border, because that’s where I start. The cornerstones were easy – Joan had an applique star in the upper right hand corner, so I just copied that into the other corners.

As for the borders, I couldn’t come up with something creative enough (for me) that would go with this quilt, so I ended up doing something simple with holly leaves. It would need to be able to ~~work~~ play well with the applique in the borders. Just now, looking at these pictures, I wish I had added piano keys on the outside of the swags.

Along the lower border were 2 bears, but they needed a mama bear so I added her in the back of them.

Joan asked how I got the bear to look just like the others. Well, I cheated, and here is a tutorial showing you how I did it. But… it shows what I did with the trees at the top of the quilt instead of the bear; I did the same technique. I found myself going back and forth on this quilt, adding a bit here and a bit there. It seemed to me that I was doing a lot of the same things, so in that big open space in the tree farm, I decided to add more trees. I have a roll of vellum or onion skin (I can’t remember which I’d bought) for tracing designs. So, to add more trees, I simply traced the applique trees already there and added more trees around them. This would be my quilting design. If you look closely at the corners of the paper, you will see where I have straight pins holding the paper in place. I just stick them straight down without trying to weave them into the fabric. When I do that, it just turns out worse.

After I had the trees drawn out, I then hold my left hand on the paper and move the machine around with my right hand (if you are left handed, hold the paper with your right hand and move the machine with your left hand). If you don’t already know this, a longarm quilting machine floats or hovers above the fabric and has no feed dogs (those gritty teeth things on the bottom/bobbin plate of a domestic sewing machine) to keep it steady and in place. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Unless someone shows you what I just did, you will never know if “I meant to do that” or not.

And, here is the result after I tore the paper off.

I tried to give each of the houses a different roof top, but some of them are repeated. If you go back and take a second look at the border pictures, you can see more houses in those shots.

Most of the houses in this quilt reminded me of the Victorian houses in the Colorado mountains. This trio, however, could have been cabins, if I had thought about it long enough. But, they turned out okay as Victorian houses as well.

The final picture is of the star on top of the “town tree” shining down for its audience to “ooh” and “ahh”.

All in all, this was a fun quilt to “quilt.” I hope you enjoyed the show and learned something, too! Merry Christmas in June!

It’s spring time at Wilma’s

May 15, 2015 Cowtown Quilts6 Comments

Wilma has 2 quilts that I’ve done for her in the past few months – you will soon see why it’s spring time at Wilma’s. She’s a quick quilt-maker. This lady has a talent for putting together colors like nobody I’ve seen before. The first quilt I’d like to share is what I called “Wilma’s Mums.”

Can you see the mums in the quilt blocks?

I tried to put leaves all over the black and green areas, but I hid mums in the quilt blocks behind the “fabric” mums.

And, along the borders, I changed it up a bit by quilting spider mums. I’m not sure I got the exact essence of the flowers because I was only going with my imagination and the pictures in the fabric. Spider mums are one of my favorite flowers, so I knew the petals needed to be short in the middle and long on the outer edge. But, I wasn’t sure how to stitch that out so it would look more 3-D.

Another cool thing about the backing on this quilt is that the fabric is very soft. And, if you look very closely, you can see green owls in the fabric… watching over the garden. 🙂

This next quilt of Wilma’s is the latest one I’ve quilted.

As you can see from this next picture, what looks like applique blocks are actually fabric panels. This is great for those of us who love the look of applique but don’t have the time to do it ourselves. I think it looks real enough. Don’t you?

Wilma wanted the faux applique outlined and feathers everywhere else. So, feathers, we did!

I could have done any number of variations of feather styles on Wilma’s quilt, but I liked the way the feathers in the picture below cradled the bouquets of flowers. I thought they complimented the pieced blocks nicely.

And, here’s the back side.

What do you think? Does it have enough feathers? I think the pictures of the back side makes it look bouffant or like divinity candy or something like it. I don’t know how to describe it. But, I love it!

Raggedy Ann and Andy

May 15, 2015 Cowtown Quilts2 Comments

Barbara and the ladies at her church have been hard at work making quilts. If I understand it correctly, they either raffle or auction them off to make money for their church. What is really cute about this quilt is that, although it is a Raggedy Ann and Andy quilt, there are hand made dolls to go with it. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of them to share with you so you could see how cute the quilt looks with them. However, I do have pictures of the quilt.

Here’s a full shot. Simple, but imagine it with a Raggedy Ann and a Raggedy Andy sitting on it.

And, here is what I added to the blocks. There are plenty of things I could have done with this, but I really wanted it to be playful and I was hoping the ladies at Barbara’s church would be okay with it. Do you think it’s okay and “fits” the quilt?

I have another picture of the third row of blocks, but I cannot get it to upload here, so I guess I will just have to show you the back. Maybe you can get an idea from this. Just imagine it reversed.

If you are interested in this quilt, you will have to be real nice to the ladies at Queen of the Holy Rosary Wea Catholic Church in Bucyrus, Kansas. Maybe you can get in on the fun! 😉

Claudia’s BIG quilt aka the King and Queen Quilt

May 15, 2015 Cowtown QuiltsLeave a comment

…But not known as Clifford, the Big Red Dog Quilt… Actually it didn’t have a name so I called it Claudia’s King and Queen quilt for several reasons. It’s for a King sized bed that her husband made; a king in the rest of our minds. I mean, how many people can build and make a bed??? And, a king-sized bed at that! So, her husband is the king and she is the queen who made the quilt for their bed. Fitting, don’t you think? 😉

This first picture shows (well, sort of) how big the quilt really is. It was hanging off my design wall. You can’t see the full picture here. Why, I don’t know. But, the side borders go well beyond the sides of this picture.

And, this one is a little closer, but not much.

For Claudia’s quilt, I did pretty much the same kind of quilting I did with Judy’s family quilt. It’s an inexpensive and fun design; a way to do some allover Edge-to-Edge quilting and still sprinkle some feathers in.

I snuck a couple of butterflies in to her quilt. The long strips between the blocks on the front have butterflies in them, so I thought I’d add a “king” butterfly and a “queen” butterfly. Can you guess which is which? 😉

And, here are some shots of the front. Really, quilting doesn’t show up as much as we think it will, and, for that, I am glad. I really am okay with that, because I think the quilting should be complimentary and not overpowering.

See the butterflies in the long strips between the blocks?

If you want to see this one in person, you’re going to have to become a friend of Claudia’s. 😉

Marian’s Spring Bouquet

May 15, 2015 Cowtown Quilts2 Comments

If you’ve ever heard of Edyta Sitar from Laundry Basket Quilts, you know she creates masterpieces from scraps. Marian recently made a quilt from Edyta’s pattern “Spring Bouquet.” If you like what you see in this post, you can find the pattern at Laundry Basket Quilts here.

Let’s start out with a full shot, so you can really start drooling.

As you can see, there are what looks to me like a gazillion pieces, many of them tiny. I know this must have taken some time for Marian to complete.

Before I get on to the close-ups of Marian’s quilt, I want to show you a trick I use when quilting. I have a couple of laser lights for making sure I get things square. I have a laser square that I use for blocking quilts. You can see how I use that here. Yes, it’s a tool you can find at your local hardware store; a place I get several other tools for my quilting work. But, for when I don’t have the room for the laser square such as when I’m working on my quilting machine’s frame, I use another laser tool like this in the lower right of the picture below. These can also be used for making sure you hang pictures straight across a wall. I use it to line up seams and borders as I am moving along the quilt. I can run my fingers along that laser line and nudge the top this way or that if it needs it.

So, let’s take a look at some quilting I did along the borders so you can see what I did with Marian’s quilt.

And, then we’ll move a little inside the borders.

I know Marian didn’t want any stitching inside the applique (some people do, some people don’t), but see those daisy looking flowers on the right in the picture below? I couldn’t control myself and had to tack that center down. It was trying to fly off the quilt. Honestly, I usually try very hard to give the customer what he or she wants, but, since she was putting this in a show, I thought it might detract from the beauty of Marian’s work. So, I stitched it down. <big breath>

Until we get to the middle…

If you would like to ~~drool on~~ see this quilt in person, Marian has entered it into the Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival held at the Overland Park Convention Center next month…June 19 – 21. For more information on the quilt festival, check them out here.

Stephenson’s Family Quilt 2015

May 15, 2015 Cowtown Quilts2 Comments

I am really behind on sharing my customers’ quilts, so I am going to try to get as many of them posted today as possible. I apologize up front for bombarding you with all the eye candy. 😉

Judy’s family reunion is later this month, I think. I cannot believe how much Judy has gotten done this past year. She has been our quilt guild’s boutique chairperson for the booth the guild is having at the Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival in June. You can find out more about the quilt festival here. They’ve got a really cute cinch bag for sale for only $8! You can find that here. Anyhow, I digress… Judy has been working on 1,000 kits for guild members to make stuff from to sell in the booth. She’s come up with tons of ideas for little and big items and has been cutting, gathering, arranging, distributing over and over again amidst all the other things she’s had going on in her life I have no idea how she’s survived this past year. I don’t ever want to have to follow in her footsteps!

On top of all that, she managed to get the family quilt done. She auctions the quilts off at the family reunion to raise money for family members in need. Isn’t that awesome? And, to add to her stress, I started something baaaaad when I quilted her family quilt last year. I stitched names and dates into it. So, this year, she machine embroidered names and dates into nearly all the blocks, I think. She said it took her for. ever! And, I believe it!

First off, let’s look at the whole quilt. I LOVE how Judy made this a scrappy quilt with all the different colors and fabrics, yet she pulled the colors together in each of the blocks and then, “pow!”, added them out into the checkerboard border. She really pulled this off well, in my humble opinion.

Now, as you look at the picture above, I want to show you the parts where she embroidered the names and dates. Here’s a close-up of the embroidery – it’s in white, so it is subtle and doesn’t over power the rest of the quilt. Do you see it in the strip across the middle of this picture below?

Here’s another view where you can see the embroidered strips above and below each block.

And, to put it all into perspective, here is a shot of it draped across my quilting machine’s frame. Now, go back up to the top of this post and look at the full view of the quilt. Impressive, huh? Each time I look at it, I am amazed that Judy was able to pull together all she has this year. I think the colors, the stars, the Irish Chain and the checkerboard border are all symbolic of this past year for Judy. She’s had some jewels in her life, it’s been colorful and sometimes probably drastic and dramatic, she’s had some chains, she’s kept them in her reign (with the solid strip between the blocks and the border) while dealing with the stepping stones (checkerboard border) around her life.

Okay, so after all that, this is what I contributed, trying to give it some elegance while staying out of the way… don’t expect much. LOL!

Well… it kind of goes with the paisley backing of the quilt. <laughing again>

Elaine’s quilt

March 29, 2015 Cowtown QuiltsLeave a comment

I can’t think of what this quilt reminds me of, other than a vintage French type of quilt, probably because of the fabric. Unfortunately, I could not get any good pictures of her quilt. It’s a beautiful quilt, but the lighting wouldn’t cooperate or something.

Elaine sent me this quilt with an idea of what she wanted quilted, which was custom quilting, but we decided on another design. Elaine likes simple lines and designs, so we went with piano keys in the border, a design with marquise shapes in the triangle blocks around the border and an allover design in the blocks.

You can barely see the quilting in any of these pictures. The thread was a ivory/bone color to match the background fabric of the triangles, and it doesn’t seem to show up (to me) on the other fabrics. In the following picture, I quilted an allover design that looks similar to a Fleur-de-lis.

Can you see it at all? We probably could have done an allover, edge-to-edge design on this quilt and saved Elaine some money. I should have suggested it, but I didn’t think of it until just now, while looking at these pictures. What do you think?

*note: I just finished up another quilt, but I need to check with the customer to see if it is okay to post it first. She made it as a raffle quilt for a family reunion. And, tomorrow I start on yet another quilt. Hopefully I will get to those other 2 blog posts that I started awhile back. We’ll see what this week brings. Happy Spring!

Cowtown Quilts

Creating tomorrow's heirlooms

Category: Customer Quilts

Dresden Plate with a Jelly Roll

Square Peg in a Round Hole

To the Moon and Back

A Woodland Christmas… by Joan

It’s spring time at Wilma’s

Raggedy Ann and Andy

Claudia’s BIG quilt aka the King and Queen Quilt

Marian’s Spring Bouquet

Stephenson’s Family Quilt 2015

Elaine’s quilt