The Nightmare Before Christmas Quilt

This was more of an "art quilt", the first I've ever worked on. It was brought to me by yet another lovely new client, Beth. It featured appliqué, hand embroidery, and paint.

Beth made it for her teenage daughter, I believe, who likes the Tim Burton movie. I, myself, had never seen "The Nightmare Before Christmas", but thankfully Netflix carries it. So I queued it up on the old computer and let it play while I was working on this quilt. I can't say it's a new fav or anything, but it was fun to see the scene where "Jack" sings and walks into the setting depicted on this quilt.

Lots of open space to fill here. Beth let me have total freedom with it. She had a photo of an example quilt that had a little bit of quilting in the moon, so I expanded upon that idea. The rest was just play. 

I divided up the black background with some straight channels and filled these sections with a variety of pebbles, overlapping swirls, and stippling. I went for a woodgrain-ish effect in the brown tree, but that proved tricky to execute, because the tree was much taller than the depth of my quilting frame. So I kept having to un-roll and re-roll my bars, to allow for long lines of woodgrain. 

Fun to play with a different style of quilting than I typically see!

Birds in Funky Frames Quilt

This is a second quilt from new client, Nicole. She had me do a table topper last month that was a gift for her sister, but I think she said she's keeping this one for herself. I'm so glad for her! It's a beautiful, colorful, and cuddly quilt, sure to keep anyone warm and cheerful on a winter's evening.

I'm the first longarm quilter that Nicole ever hired. I gave her a low-level price point and a high-level price point, and she asked me to stay somewhere in the middle. So I did some light custom work.

Ribbon candy in the sashing strips. Overlapping swirls in the outer border. Alternating rows of pebbles and peonies in the squares. Since the subject of this quilt is birds, I like how the pebbling kinda brings to mind eggs.

I kept the density a little on the sparser side, because I knew she wanted this to be a cuddly quilt. Dense quilting smashes down the batting, which is the layer of insulation that gives the quilt warmth. It also makes it stiffer. This one should be just right for cold nights ahead. Enjoy, Nicole!

For the backing, Nicole supplied a plush minky (sp?) fabric. It inspired Eric to volunteer his first commentary on a quilt in his life. "I like the looks of that fuzzy one. It looks warm." He's SUCH an art lover!

Cats in Frames Quilt

This quilt from new client Elenora was so cute that I just needed to let it shine. There are times when quilting can march out front-and-center and be a featured element in a completed quilt. But this piece had such bold color contrast, such identifiable centerpieces, such strong design... anything I tried to do with quilting would just interfere. So the best thing I could do was be invisible.

I used a simple allover design - a swirly, whirly mixture that would flow through all the straight lines of the quilt top construction. And I used monofilament thread, which is clear. I'm told that years ago, when monofilament threads were new on the market, they were course and thick, like fishing line. But nowadays they are soft and supple, and they just disappear into the fabric.

I had to work hard with the lighting to get my quilting to show up in photos. It's actually more visible on the back side because I used black bobbin thread.

This quilt is a STAR!

My new quilty friend Nadine brought this quilt to me and gave me "quilter's choice" freedom to choose the quilting designs. She just said she wanted it to be a custom job (as opposed to an all-over quilting pattern) and told me to do whatever I wanted.

I knew that I wanted the stars to stand out, so I quilted them less densely than the adjacent areas, leaving the batting within the stars to puff up in a 3D effect. I used a very traditional continuous curve motif to work my way around these perfectly-pointed stars.

Swirls in the white areas around the big stars.

Serpentine in the white areas around the small stars. Overlapping ribbon candy in the gray half-square-triangles outside that. Swirls in the white areas outside that. Ribbon candy in the flying-geese black triangles.

In the setting triangles around the outside (see below), I quilted arcs with overlapping ribbon candy on the inside and feathers on the outside. 

In the black sashing strips that wove their way amongst the quilt squares, I stitched serpentine parallel lines. 

The funny thing about these serpentine lines... I'm pretty good at quilting/drawing a straight line from top to bottom. Less good from bottom to top. I pretty okay at quilting a straight line from left to right, worse from right to left. You know what I'm pretty darn bad at (and didn't realize prior to this project)? Straight, parallel lines that are DIAGONAL. And that's exactly what they were all over the body of this quilt. After about 6 inches of the first strip, I had to step away and sketch for a while, because it was a PROBLEM! I tried to contort my body from side to side, so that I could imagine I was straight on. Next time, I think I'll just do lines up and down! 

One thing that did help was using my hand to press down on the ruler-base-extender on my machine, to create some drag and keep that free-floating machine under a little more control. Finally my left hand can contribute to the quilting process!

On the outer borders I stitched pearls on a string for the spine of feathers. Every time I use a string-of-pearls motif, I think of Glenn Miller.

All-in-all, I think it turned out great, and I sure hope Nadine thinks so, too!

Nadine's Geometric Gem

This quilt was made by my newest quilting hero, Nadine. She is a first-time client for me, and I couldn't stop marveling at how PERFECT this quilt top is. Every point is perfect, every seam is pressed, everything straight and square and flat. It was a DREAM to work with. And it will make a great gift for her teenage granddaughter. It's beginning to look a lot like Christ-mas!

French Birds Appliqué Quilt

A new client, Linda, brought this quilt to me after seeing my work on another appliquéd piece I did for Rumpled Quiltskins quilt shop. She left the quilting design up to me, which is always a nice treat for a quilter. I tried to compliment the intricate embroidery with quilting in the same frame-of-mind and density.

I have to admit, this quilt had its way with me. I started off envisioning less intense quilting, a much simpler design. But as I got to working, I just couldn't stop. It was like the quilt just told me what it wanted. The embroidery is so stunning, it demanded that I step up my game to try and meet it on the same footing. I'm so happy I deviated from the original plan. I think it turned out pretty nicely!