Bali Wedding Star quilt

I was honored to be able to work on this gorgeous Bali Wedding Star quilt. The piecing pattern is a design by Judy Niemeyer, all done in beautiful batik fabrics. The pictures just don't do it justice- those batiks are so vibrant & beautiful. All that amazing paper-piecing must have taken hours & hours!

The quilt was 104" square, so I didn't have a way to get a picture of the full quilt. But here is a good size section of it.

This quilt is done with all hand-guided patterns. The Intelliquilter was not used at all for this one. Each of the little squares in the arcs are quilted with a continuous curve pattern, and the stars have a large arc pattern in those areas. The feathers are a hand-guided pattern, to fill in the light areas between the darker batiks.

For the feathers I used a finer thread, called "So Fine" by Superior Threads. Since there is a bit of back-tracking on the feathers, there is less thread build-up in those areas that have to be stitched over twice.

The edges of the quilt all follow the curved piecing, and so there will be some interesting binding techniques going on. I am hoping to see if after she has the binding complete.

A view from the back:

Recent quilts

This first one is quilted with the "Bubbles" pattern. There are little fish in some of the fabrics on the quilt, and so the bubbles are cute with that.

This flying geese quilt was quilting using the "Gala Vine" pattern.

And this quilt by is done with freehand hearts.

And here's a quilt using the new "Wishing Star" pattern. I think it turned out very sweet. The customer is giving this quilt to her granddaughter who is moving into a big-girl bed. It looks like I only have a close-up of the quilt. I wish I had gotten a full image of the quilt.

New patterns

Pictures of the latest patterns available with the Intelliquilter:

quilt for my parents

I made this quilt a few months ago for my parents, and just realized that I haven't posted pictures here yet.

It's a queen size, a little longer than a standard one so that the pillows can be underneath & the quilt can tuck in under them a bit. The fabrics were picked to match a wall-hanging that they have, and all came from Roelofs'. They had the perfect fabric collection that coordinated together, and so that helped alot with the fabric choosing. I really made the ladies at the store get a work-out, I think there were something like 40 different fabrics in the quilt! But I like the variety & scrappy sort of look.

Mom wanted a higher-loft to the quilt, and so the quilting is light custom, trying to keep the quilting from getting too dense. The original pattern did not have the diamond border, I made that using some blocks that were left over from piecing the middle of the quilt. I was very happy with that border, and think it really adds alot to the quilt.

They're smiling.... I think they like it! :-)

E-bay quilt top

I purchased this quilt top on E-bay quite a long time ago.... I've had it quilted for some time, too, and the recent quilt show in town gave me some incentive to get the binding on & get it finished.

The quilt top was listed as 100% cotton fabrics, but I'm pretty sure that the blue plaid fabric is a poly/cotton blend. Ohwell, it made a good practice quilt top, and I'm actually pretty happy with it.

Denim quilt

I've been saving old jeans for quite a few years, I just throw them in a box downstairs.... Lately I ran across the box & thought I should do something with them. And after reading "Scraps & Shirttails" by Bonnie Hunter, I thought her pattern for a denim quilt would be perfect project to use some of them up. I still have enough jeans to make another, but I think I'll wait a little while to start on the next one.

It went together really fast, I think the cutting part took longer than the piecing. The red square in the middle of each 9-patch is a yard-sale shirt. Her version in the book used all blue jeans, but I think I like the little bit of color that the red squares add.

Roelof's store had an awesome 50% off sale on their already-marked-down fabric, and so I found a great piece of flannel for the backing at $2/yard. Gotta love that! So, the whole quilt will cost about $8. It measures 63 x 82- I think that will work on a twin bed. Not sure exactly what it's final destination will be, but I'm sure it will be more useable than a box of old jeans with holes in the knees.

I think I will do some simple quilting, and try to avoid all those thick seams where the blocks meet. More pics to come after it's quilted......

Double Wedding Ring

I've been longarm quilting for over 7 years, and this is the first double wedding ring quilt that I've gotten to work on. These aren't exactly in the fast piecing category. Wow- no straight seams anywhere. This quilts' destination is a wedding present- I'm sure it will be loved for years to come.

I stitched in the ditch around all the pieces, and then used the Intelliquilter to set in the designs in the tan areas. There are over 300 individual motifs, and I was so glad to have the computer to help me out with that!

A wedding shower game

I hosted a wedding shower here at my house a week ago, and had made these little fabric flowers for a shower game. Each flower had a question tied to it, things like, "where did you go on your honeymoon?" or "where were you when your husband proposed to you?" Each lady took a flower, and we each had a turn to answer our question. It was fun to hear everyone's answers. Some of us had been married only a few years, and others for 50 years.






I was inspired by a tutorial for the fabric flowers from a blog called Polka Dot Pineapple. She has all kinds of fun tutorials on her blog. The flowers were fun to make & a nice way to use up some smaller scraps I had on hand.

I love summer!

Finally, the weather is hot today, little C & I spent some time outside picking some things out of the garden. We picked snow peas, raspberries, a green pepper, and got 3 eggs from the chicken coop. It's so much fun to see all the garden plants start to grow & develop & start picking some of the produce. We've already picked quite a bit of red & green lettuce, and tons of strawberries. Yum! Wouldn't it be great if fresh fruits & vegetables were available all year round?

quilt pictures

Here is a beautiful Carpenter's Star quilt- I love the colors in this quilt, it would look right at home at my house. :-) This looks like a quilt that would go together fast, using 1/2 square triangles. We decided on the Monsera quilting pattern.

And here's a cute quilt using the Flower Power pattern, I thought this was just perfect with the daisy fabric in the quilt.

website with free patterns

Have you been to http://www.quiltville.com/ yet? It's full of free quilt patterns & tons of pictures, I go there all the time for inspiration. She has all kinds of ideas for using scraps & making beautiful quilts. I've been trying to use up some of the fabric that I have already & not buy more for a while. Here are two quilts that I've made already using her free patterns:

Here's the pattern link for this one : http://quiltville.com/weedwhacker.shtml

This goes together very fast, it was a fun quilt. I just made a baby size- with the borders it measures 40" square. This is just the quilt top, I haven't quilted it yet.

And here's the link for this pattern : http://www.quiltville.com/scrappytrips.shtml

I oriented the blocks differently that her quilt- I made them all follow a big diamond shape, since the quilt is not so bit. Go to here website, and you can see all different pictures of how others have put this quilt together.

I used the "Bubbles" pattern to quilt this- I think this is such a fun pattern. Here's the back showing the quilting detail.

IQ Patterns- Novelty & kids' patterns