Shirley's quilt

Shirley made this beautiful quilt and picked an edge to edge design. This is my domestic adaptation of Tammy Finkler's Pansie Vine panto. I used Connecting Thread's Red Violet cotton thread. The spool has 1200 yds and I used almost the whole thing!

You can see the pattern really well on the back:)

Thanks Shirley!

Carrie's charity quilts

 

 My friend Carrie asked me if I would be willing to quilt some charity quilts for her. She made them for the Hopes and Dreams Quilt Challenge for ALS. They are lap quilts for patients with Lou Gehrig's disease. The contest is also to help raise awareness and research money for ALS.

Carrie does amazing embroidery! I am always fascinated with the intricate designs she does.

Below is the backing fabric.

 

I love this fabric! I asked Carrie where she got it and she can't remember! She thinks she got from the Internet. If anyone know where to find some more of this, let me know. Love, love, love it!

 

I really like the colors in this one as well.

I think I'm getting better at my unmarked loopy loops too:)

 

This batik quilt gave me pause as far as quilting. I was a little concerned that my machine would have trouble with some of the thicker seams and the blocks are so different. I decided to stipple. The gray blends in with most of the colors and doesn't take away from the block designs. Some quilts just aren't meant for fancy quilting:) Sometimes, less is better.

Thanks Carrie!

Betsy's quilts

Betsy found 3 antique quilt tops that her grandmother made and was looking for someone to compete them. This first quilt was machine pieced.

I stitched these curves up and down the blocks without a ruler. I love how it looks like circles around each shape.

The second quilt was a really cute pink and green basket quilt. I didn't want to over quilt the blocks so I just stitched in the ditch around the design and put a little diamond-type shape in each basket.

I stitched swirls in the sashing and filled in the green with feathers.

I was a little scared about the outer border. Note the HUGE ruffles in the photo above. What on earth was I going to do about that? The whole quilt is hand stitched and for some reason the outer border was extremely ruffled.

I had planned to do the same swirly design as in the sashing, but the thought of stitching loads of bumpy pleats into the swirly design didn't sound appealing. This straight line design is very forgiving of ruffly outer borders. It worked pretty well. And every now and again I folded the lump neatly into a pleat and sewed it down into the design. Nice and flat now:)

One more bed-sized quilt to go and then a bunch of blocks to sew together into a lap quilt.

Thanks Betsy!

Annette's charity quilt

Boy am I behind on my posts! I looked at my little red book and counted the quilts that I've done since the last guild meeting (about 5 weeks ago). I've quilted 14 quilts since then! And two of them had to be bound:)

Annette called me up and asked if I could fit in this charity quilt. It is a lap-size quilt. She didn't want it quilted too heavily.

I love the way that groups of blocks are 'framed'. I decided to take each framed block as a single unit. I quilted a long curvy line down the center like I would if I was starting a feather, then I added some swirls off of each side and echoed the whole thing. No marking involved:)

Then I quilted some swirls in the white background and curvy line in each of the 'frames'.

Thanks Annette!

Joanne's baby quilts

Joanne brought me a couple of adorable little baby quilts. Loving this pink one. I quilted it with my favorite edge to edge floral swirl. Can't get enough of this pattern!

Love this baby boy quilt as well!

 

It is covered with the most adorable bug and frog fabric.

I used an edge to edge design that I found on a quilt at quiltdad.com.

 

Thanks Joanne!

Invasion!

So yesterday, my husband looks out of the kitchen window and says, "There's a rabbit out there!" We have lived here almost 10 years, and I have we've only seen bunnies in our yard once. It didn't end well. Out dog Murphy, is a killer of small things, and he discovered quite the taste for fresh rabbit.

I went out, thinking to get a closer look and then scare the thing away. Bunnies are cute, but I'm not willing to share my garden OR my flowers with them. Then next thing I know, there's another one! A teeny baby bunny munching happily in the grassy path.

This one was even cuter! No matter, they still have to go. We brought the kids out to help scare the bunnies away, but they went to ground.

So what do I see this morning, finishing off the last leaves of my crocuses?! The big bunny is back!Grrrrr... That's it! Release the hounds! Useless beasts:) Murphy caught the scent, but those rabbits are fast! With some fancy maneuvering, it managed to evade capture. Not five minutes later, it was back it the same spot.

Jacob is out there now, in his boots and raincoat, on a rabbit hunt. I hope he succeeds:)

Debbie's quilt

Debbie waylaid me at the April Forsyth Piecers and Quilters Guild meeting:)  She had loved the swirly pattern I quilted on my teacup quilt and she asked if I would have time to finish her quilt of valor before the next month's meeting. Debbie made this quilt for her son, Christopher, who has been a combat photographer for the US Navy for the last 14 years. She told me she was headed out to Italy in 5 weeks to see him. Could I get this done in time? Sure, I said, no problem, hehehe.

I had a baby quilt and a t-shirt quilt in line before her, but I was confident I could get this done in time. And here we are, a record two weeks (30 hours of quilting and 33 bobbins later)...

Debbie wanted the swirly pattern quilted on all the white background, but she gave me free license for the rest. So fun! I ended up choosing a feather design for the red 'ribbons'. At first I was thinking more geometric, but the straight lines I tested on my plexiglass sheet just looked cold and stiff. I thought the feathers made the ribbons flow more.

The yellow stars were the most challenging for my machine. My poor little Jane is worlds better than the original Viking I started quilting on, but she still balks at seams. I was able to power ahead, teeth clenched, through the start seams with only one thread breakage, yay!

I had a lot of fun with the the large blue star. I used a design that Green Fairy Quilts uses a lot for squares. Love these loops and circular square echoes:)

I wanted to do a similar design with these squares on point for the outer blue border, but my math leaves something to be desired. The squares wouldn't line up properly for the length of the border and would have ended up more like rectangles. I decided to quilt more feathers instead to bring all the sections together.

 

Thanks so much Debbie!