Florence pattern

This French Braid quilt was done with the "Florence" pattern.  It's a leafy sort of design that goes with alot of fabrics. 

Batik backings- prewashing

I recommend pre-washing all backings, but especially batiks, for a few reasons.  Prewashing will soften up the fabric.  Unwashed batiks can sometimes cause skipped stitiches, and uneven tension, because it's hard for the needle to penetrate the fabric.  Prewashing really makes the batiks much easier to work with.  Another reason to prewash is to remove excess dyes.  Here is a great example- look at all that blue dye in the water!  Wow!  Without prewashing, all that dye is probably going to migrate to your top the first time the completed quilt is washed. 
It only takes a few minutes to run the sink full of lukewarm water, and swish it around a few times.  Repeat until the water runs clear, then spin out the water, and stick in the the dryer on low heat until the backing is dry, and you're ready to go. 

April 18, 2011

This is a fun scrappy quilt, done with the "Bubbles" quilting pattern.  A nice whimsical pattern to go with the fun fabrics. 

Here's a Christmas French Braid quilt.  What a soft, warm quilt to snuggle up with on a cold winter night, with some hot chocolate.  The lighting must not have been the best when I took these- they look a little washed out.  The colors were very rich & deep.  This was quilting using the Festive Holly pattern.

A quilt that I made

I actually finished a bed size quilt of my own- it's going in J's bedroom.  He moved to a bigger bed from a bunk bed, and needed something to fit.  This was made with lots of red/white/blue scraps.  The pattern came from Scraps & Shirttails by Bonnie Hunter. 

New patterns April 2011

latest quilts finished....

I took some time to quilt a baby quilt that I've had pieced for a while.  I used the "Double Spiral" pattern on this one. I have used this on a few customer quilts lately, too, and I really like the clean lines of this pattern.  The circular lines are a nice contrast to the sharp points & straight lines of the piecing. 

I don't remember the name of this pattern... I think I jotted down the notes of how to make the block from the show "Simply Quilts" when that used to be on TV years ago.  Too bad they cancelled that one.  Each block goes together super fast. 

I found this fun boat fabric that had some of the same colors from the front to use for the backing:

And, this is a quilt using the new "Swirling Waters" pattern designed by Ellen Munnich.  It seems to work on well on "Asian" type prints.  Isn't this a fun swirly-looking design- sort of like a lazy pool water. 

And, a custom quilt with some very small pieces in those "Tree of Life" blocks.  Lots of little triangles!  A simple block design was requested in the alternating plain blocks, and so I used the square feather wreath there.  White-on-white quilting is always so pretty. 

 This is a baby quilt, the Dad is a pilot, so the quilter requested airplanes. After a little internet research, I found this pattern from The Quilter's Niche.

Also used the embroidery machine to personalize the quilt top with baby's first name.

New Pattern- All-Over Feathers

This is a new design available- All-over Feathers (designed by Ellen Munich).  I think this design will work great with alot of quilts- a nice companion to floral fabrics.  Creates texture without overwhelming the prints. 

A view from the back of the quilt:

more customer quilt

One of the quilts I've recently completed- she asked for a simple border pattern, and this is what we came up with.  I've never used this before, but I really like it- I think it fits this quilt.
The light florals with the white will make a nice "Spring" quilt.

This quilt called for some "texture" type of quilting- she went with a free-hand "water" meander design. 

A few of my own projects

Here a few of my own projects that I've been working on lately.  I'm making a quilt for J's bed, using a pattern from this book:
Scraps & Shirttails by Bonnie Hunter

I'm using red, white, and blue scraps from my collection of fabrics, and also some recycled cotton shirts.  I love this fabric with the words to the Pledge of Allegiance on it. 

This is a really easy pattern- you start off with 2.5" strips, 18" long.  I sewed 40 strips together, and then sub-cut into long 2.5" strips.  So far the body of the quilt you see here measures 62" x 80".  I'm going to add some borders, and I also saved 3 strips of 2.5" squares to put in the borders, too. 

And, here's a table runner I put together on Saturday (just the top- it's not quilted yet).

I used some leftover blocks from the border of this quilt:

Very easy & fast since the half-square triangle blocks were already done & just waiting for a home. 

Loading 2 quilts on one backing

I have a $30 minimum per quilt, but sometimes when there are 2 or 3 small quilts that can be mounted on a large backing I can waive the minimum charge.  This is especially true if the quilts are similar in size and can use the same thread color and pattern, like these quilts below. 

If I can use one large backing piece for all the quilts, I only have to mount that once on the frame, and this saves me time.  These quilts all had the same backing and thread color, so I just zipped the backings together with the serger & loaded the one large backing piece. 

T-shirt quilt

Some pictures of a customer's t-shirt quilt I quilted.  This is done using Dave Hudson's "Stars" pattern.  I haven't used this pattern often, but I really like how this turned out.  With most t-shirt quilts, I go right through the logo's on the shirts.  Unless there is a really thick section that may bend a needle or cause it to skip stitches.  Then I will go around that area.  Most of the time, I can go right through with no problems. 

A few recent quilts

If you're a Cyclone fan, you'll love this one!  All Cyclone fabrics, and a soft red flannel backing.  This was quilted using the "square spiral" quilting pattern.  It looks like I didn't get a picture of the whole quilt, just a close-up of the front.

And here's a small baby quilt panel- I outlined the printed borders, and added the "puzzle piece" pattern in the middle section.  One of my favorite patterns for a kids' quilt. 

And this is one quilted with "Hearts Surfing".  I think this is the first time I've used this pattern.