Cross-hatch blocks

Custom quilt- feather wreaths

Isn't this a cheery quilt... beautiful floral prints & white background.  I repeated a feather wreath in the body of the quilt- looks nice on the back, too with all the feathers.

Tulip Festival Quilt Show

Yesterday I had a chance to visit the Tulip Festival Quilt Show in Orange City.  Every year the Sioux Prairie Quilter's Guild puts on a show- it was another beautiful group of quilts this year.  The guild did workshops this year on Bargello quilts and French Braid quilts, so they had a big group of each of these showing the different quilts that were started during the workshops.  It was so much fun to see how each quilts looked so different with the fabric choices of the quilter.  From Christmas fabrics to black & white to brights- all so very different.  And those Bargello's- some of the sections had 1/4" finished size strips- wow!  

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.