Rita's Blue & Gold Beauty

This great cuddly quilt was the first project I got to work on for a new client, named Rita. I love these colors - so vibrant and fun! She wanted loose stippling edge-to-edge, which, I have to say, is one of my favorite quilting motifs. It was the first free-motion-quilting pattern I ever attempted, and I will never get tired of it!

Rita also had me apply "effortless binding", so that it was completely finished when she got the quilt back. Ready to cuddle and love!

Renee On The Fly #2

Here's the second quilt on this quick-turn-around order for Renee from Washington. I think these overlapping wavy lines kinda look like skate tracks on ice. They add a gentle texture to the colorful 9-patch quilt top, without making an already pretty busy piece too over-the-top. I also like how these mainly vertical lines keep this quilt cuddly and supple. Should be good for the cold winter ahead!

Renee On The Fly - #1

My quilting friend, Renee, recently contacted me to see if she could drop off a couple quilts. She lives in Washington, but she was visiting family nearby for a few days. So she figured she could drop off her quilts, and then when they were finished I could mail them back to her, as we'd done in the past.

But since her quilting requests were so simple and straight forward - edge-to-edge quilting, my choice of motif - I suggest that we try to send them home with her finished, on this very trip! I was able to leaf-frog her order ahead of others (feeling confident the owners wouldn't mind) and did this two-quilt order on the fly! She dropped them off to me immediately upon her arrival, and I texted her a few days later to let her know they were ready for her to pick up. Yay! I love it when a plan comes together!

This quilt was a lovely Irish-chain-like pattern, with lots of great colors and prints. For the quilting motif, I used overlapping swirls. I think it's fun and funky and great!

Carol's "Tis The Season"

This was a fun variation-version of the quilt I showed you yesterday. I love the deep red fabrics in this interpretation by my client, Carol.

I loved putting the holly and berries in both of those red borders. They were exactly the right width for this whimsical treatment. I put pine boughs and pine cones in some of the squares, along with ribbon candy, and snowballs/Christmas tree bulbs ornaments, in others. I echoed around the embroidered words and the featured embroidery in the outer border. Then I filled around them with serpentine lines, which really made those un-quilted areas pop.

Happy Christmas, Carol! Thanks for letting me quilt this piece for you! Stunning!

Peggy's "Tis The Season"

This beautifully executed piece came to me from Peggy in Lethbridge. She was at Rumpled Quilt Skins shop in Okotoks, AB, and she saw the store sample for this pattern, called "Tis The Season", which I quilted. She liked it, so she bought the pattern and completed it for herself. And I was so glad she asked me to quilt it for her!

This quilt had a variation in fabric from the store sample. Originally the background fabric was a satiny, shimmery fabric. Instead Peggy made her quilt with osnaburg fabric, which is grainy and loosely-woven, almost like homespun. It is wonderful! Gave the quilt a more rustic feel, charming and folksy.

I made a few quilting changes from the original piece, as well. Holly and berries in the inner blue teal border. Ribbon candy in the wider outer border. Serpentine in the background of the outer embroidered border. I think most of the other motifs are roughly the same.

Peggy did a STELLAR job with all this intricate embroidery. Her piecing was perfect. Everything was flat and straight and square. It made this piece a joy to quilt! I am so pleased with the results. This quilt will be sure to add holiday warmth to Peggy's home come Christmas. Yay!

Danna #4 of 4

Whew! Danna, you are so productive! This is the fourth and final piece in the first-ever batch of quilts that Danna brought me to quilt for her. Gosh, I've loved every one!

This is one that Danna actually made for herself, which is always a fun treat for me - to quilt a piece that the piecer gets to have in her home! Danna wanted custom quilting and let me have free rein. I felt like the multi-colored batik fabric had enough color and value variation that the quilting wasn't going to show up TOO well, so I didn't take the time to put anything too structured in those areas. If you look closely at the outer border, it's kinda like an i-spy quilting motif challenge. There's a bouquet of several quilting motifs in there - peonies, paisleys, swirls, serpentine grid, headbands, leaves, and more.

This is a medallion-style quilt. There's a centerpiece, and the design of the quilt top develops outward from the center. In the very center star, I used some dot-to-dot quilting, filled with ribbon candy and concentric swirls.

In the bright blue background, I used some channels (parallel lines) radiating out from the center, and filled in between with varying sizes of ribbon candy.

"Effortless Binding" finished off this piece, so that it was ready to use when Danna picked it up. Voila!

Danna #3

This quilt pattern was named "Pink Lemonade", I believe. But in this gorgeous color-way, I'll call it Teal Lemonade. My 4-year-old daughter, Hoxie, recently learned the word "teal". She LOVES this quilt. And so do I! If you missed them, also check out Danna #1 and Danna #2, in this batch of beautiful quilts!

Danna wanted a custom quilting treatment, but still wanted the quilt to be cuddly, so I tried to achieve both. This can be a challenging combo - the very nature of custom quilting is to "fill in" all those individual little spaces within a quilt top. But when you get a bunch of really detailed, dense quilting on a piece, it stiffens up. I just tried to remind myself to keep things large and sparse, as I quilted my way through.

Swirls and leaves (aka, rosebuds) in the outer border. Rope in the thinner inner border. Orange peel in the dark teal chain-squares. Serpentine lines in the darker green spaces. Ruler work in the lighter taupe triangles. More rosebud in the centerpieces of each block. And a swirly-feather-type motif in the lighter, sky-blue spaces.

I also got to administer my "effortless binding" to this quilt, using the excess backing fabric. This is a wonderful option to efficiently use the leftover backing. You see, when a longarm quilter works on a piece, one requirement is that the backing fabric needs to be about 8" longer and wider than the quilt top. This extra yardage allows the quilter to attach the backing to the frame. Once the quilting is finished, I usually just trim this excess backing off and return it with the finished quilt. Danna had me turn those extra inches of fabric into binding, which I attached to the front AND back side of the quilt, using a special new tool I recently purchased. So, when Danna got the quilt back in her hands, it was completely finished. Easy peasy!