Tag: patchwork quilt

It’s spring time at Wilma’s

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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.”

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Can you see the mums in the quilt blocks?

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

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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.

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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.

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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?

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

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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.

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And, here’s the back side.

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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!

 

Claudia’s BIG quilt aka the King and Queen Quilt

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…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.

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

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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.

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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?  😉

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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.

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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.  😉

 

Elaine’s quilt

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

 

Nancy’s quilt

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This is a different style quilt than what Nancy usually does.  She wasn’t sure she liked it, but I am proud of her for stepping outside of her box.  She does that expand her horizons and to learn new things.  And, I think she did an excellent job of pulling all the colors together on this one.  Don’t you?

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It looks kind of like a disappearing 9-patch to me.  What do you think?

This quilt was an easy one to quilt an allover edge-to-edge design on it, which is also easy on the quilt maker’s budget.  The question was what to stitch into it.  Just about anything would go with this, but what would Nancy like?  She lets me choose, and I worry about what to pick for her, so I settled on flowers and leaves.  Everyone has had such a bad winter in the USA this year, except for us, but I still figured the promise of spring would be okay for this quilt.

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I snuck a butterfly into the quilt in the first picture, but I wish I had done a better job on it.  To me it looks like a bow.  Nancy is trying to use up her fabric (another reason for this quilt) as well as her batting, and I’d say she did a good job of it with this quilt.  Wouldn’t you?

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Cynthia’s QOV quilt

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I have 2 other posts started, but I have not had time to work on them, and I really want to show you some of my customer’s quilts.  They are doing such a phenomenal job on their quilts.  So, let’s start with Cynthia’s quilt.   Here is the whole quilt.  Just half square triangles sewn together, but what a great pattern she made with them! IMG_2320

Cynthia wanted an allover design quilted into the body of the quilt with a separate border, which was perfect for this quilt, because the border is a fairly solid color and quilting wouldn’t show too much in the body of this quilt.  This is semi-custom quilting, and it is a great, reasonably priced option for many quilts.  Here are some close-ups of the allover, edge-to-edge quilting done in the body of the quilt. I quilted loops, swirls and stars into this section.

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Edge-to-edge designs make it easy for me to slip a surprise into the quilt, since about 98% of the quilting I do is freehand.  I quilted the recipients name into the middle of the quilt and I added Cynthia’s name in the lower right corner.

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As for the borders, Cynthia wanted feathers in them.  Feathers are done free-hand, so they take less time to quilt than anything with ruler work, such as piano keys… well, for me at least.

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I really like her quilt, and I hope the receiver likes it, too!

Snowflakes for Nancy

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I’ve been negligent in posting lately.  This quilt for Nancy was finished in January.  I wasn’t sure what to stitch on this quilt until I looked closely at the fabric.  Here it was January, when we are supposed to have snow, and the weather was nearly balmy compared to the rest of the country.  This has been a bitter winter for many in the northeastern U.S.  And, flooding has engulfed the west coast.  The upper Midwest has seen brutally cold temperatures and the south has had more than their fair share of ice and cold temperatures.  But, here in the Kansas City area, we have had it mild, comparatively.

So, looking at the batik fabric Nancy had in the borders made me think this should be a winter quilt.  She has it interspersed throughout her quilt and on the the back, too.  Do you see the subtle snowflakes in the fabric?

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I filled the outer border and sashing with swirls, and the circles in the inner border were supposed to resemble snowballs, but they ended up more square than round.

The blocks themselves got snowflakes stitched into them.

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She added 3 stripes to the backing fabric.  The rest of it is white.

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And, here’s a full shot of the front.  Can you tell she likes purple, blue and yellow (GREAT colors together!)?

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A Day Late and a Dollar Short… aka Merry Christmas!

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Please forgive me.  The Christmas season is always crazy busy for me, and this December we had the added bonus of our daughter graduating from college as a doctor of Chinese Medicine.  Currently I am quilting one of my own quilts (on my holiday vacation) and I will fill you in on more details of my personal life then.  For now, let me share Diane’s holiday quilt that I quilted for her in December.

It is a BIG quilt, so this picture doesn’t give a good shot of the full length.

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Here’s a few more shots of close-ups.  Diane did a great job of piecing, embroidering and applique on the entire quilt. I enjoyed quilting it, and it sure helped me get in the mood for Christmas this year – just what I needed to get me out of the doldrums.

For the most part, I quilted holly and swirls throughout the quilt, but I added “branches” to the trees, which you cannot see in any of these pictures.  Diane chose a variegated red and green thread for the borders and trees and a cream color for the background.

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What do you think?  Would this put you in the mood for Christmas?

Quilting for a Guy?

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What do you see when you look at this picture?

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Janet made this quilt as a Christmas gift for her grandson.  Her grandson tinkers with machines and vehicles, so when I looked at this quilt, I thought of wheels and gears.  So, I started with the borders and put gears in the corners and midway between the corners.  Janet also wanted tools scattered randomly in the borders, so I added those as well and then scattered tools throughout the quilt.

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As a filler, I added flames to resemble the “smoking hot & fast” work that her grandson does.  😉  Actually, I figured he might like fast cars, too, so the flames were to make it look like the wheels were moving fast.

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Here are a few more pictures of the tools strewn about on this quilt.  I must admit that when I first started working on this quilt, I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off, that I wouldn’t do a good job of drawing (with thread) the tools on this quilt.  But, once I got started, I had a ton of fun drawing on this quilt!

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And, what a great way to finish off a quilt for a guy!  Don’t you agree?

Flaming Guitars

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My latest customer quilt is for Mary’s grandson.  Mary has done a wonderful job of combining colors to match her black fabric with musical notes.  I think she is using up her scraps; smart lady!  Anyhow, she paired the musical notes fabric with another black fabric that has guitars on it.  Here’s a shot of the whole quilt and a couple of close-ups.  Mary was very open to whatever I wanted to quilt on this, but this time we were looking at quilting something other than musical notes.  This is for her 10-year-old grandson.  What kind of stitching would you quilt on this?  The backing is a fire red, so I thought flames would work alright on this quilt.

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I snuck in a surprise down towards the bottom in the middle.  I put it in a place where it wouldn’t be obvious – you’d have to search to find it.  I wasn’t sure if her grandson would be frightened by it or think it was cool.  I’ll turn it over to the back so you can see what it is before I show you the front.  The orangey-red (flame red) is the actual color of the backing, but you can see the picture better in the second picture.

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I needed a template for adding this to the stitching, so I drew the flaming skull out onto vellum paper and then pinned it down before stitching it.  I avoid marking on my customers quilts unless I can find no alternative.  It’s just too risky.

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As you can see (or maybe you can’t – that’s the idea), after pulling the paper off, you have to really look to find the skull.

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If you are interested in seeing this process in action, I have a video of me doing this on my YouTube Channel.  You can find that video here.  I hope this helps you learn some strategies for marking (without marking ON) your quilt top for quilting.

Mary’s Music

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Isn’t this a cool quilt?  I love the fabric.  Mary said she bought up all that black fabric with musical notes that she could find, so I doubt we will be able to find it anywhere.  The picture of the front makes it look distorted, but it is actually draped from the top of my design wall and hits (on fabric) the floor. 

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Here is a close-up of the quilting I did.  I don’t know if Mary found it yet or not, but I quilted a quote by Lawrence Duncan into it in the lower right (as you look at it); “Silence is the fabric upon which the notes are woven.”  It just seemed to “fit” this quilt.  Further towards the top, I also quilted “music 2 my s”.  Hopefully that will be easier to find than the quote. 

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The back looks really cool, I think.  I have to admit that I was a little worried about it after I got it on the frame.  Seam lines always draw the fabric in so the surrounding fabric is not as taut.  But, it turned out fine.  I think Mary was very creative with this backing.  It goes great with the fabric and patchwork on the front. 

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