Thursday, November 29, 2012

Barbara's Baskets -- Quilted

Here it is, the finished quilt (remember to click on the photos to see the detail):


Some close-ups of the final design. .


Sorry about the fold in the fabric; I didn't notice it when I took the photo.


And what post would be complete without a couple shots of the back?


I have no idea what that spot is in the upper left corner; the fabric wasn't discolored. *shrug*


What are your thoughts? Would you have chosen something different?


Monday, November 26, 2012

Barbara's Baskets Part I

Barbara sent me a quilt a while back. Its been here for a bit as we've gone back and forth with the design process. Often times, I'm given a quilt where the owner wants to be more involved and I've come up with a couple of methods of quilt designing long distance to facilitate the process.

This is the block we were working with (if you turn your head to the right when viewing, it will be on point):



One method is when the quilt owner sends along a sketch of the design showing what they want. This was Barb's sketch.

However, as you can see from her "flowers," she really didn't know what, exactly, she wanted in that area.  So after talking with her, I drew these suggestions to give her some more ideas.

















Neither of these (or any of the others I sent) were what she was looking for.  She made the decision to have me quilt the "baskets" in the same manner that they were quilted in the book, "Passionate Patchwork" by Kaffe Fassett.  Barb had altered the Delft Basket pattern to suit her fabrics, adding a flange in the middle of the baskets.




From the basket design, we still had to decide on the sashing, setting triangles and border. I have a Kindle Fire and an app that allows me to take a picture and then import it into the app for so that I can draw on the photo. I sent her these pics with drawings of the quilt designs for those specific areas. There is one caveat that I always tell my customers:  My quilting is far better than my drawing! (you'll have to click on the first pic to even see it; apparently, they don't transfer to well to Blogger)





Barbara decided on the "leaves" in the sashingpictured in the top drawing on the left.  (I later told her that what she thought were leaves were my poor attempt at drawing feathers!)  She decided on the curved design in the setting triangles and piano key border shown above and right.




Stay tuned for the finished product!

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!


I hope you enjoy the day with your family and friends!!

Dory

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Quilting Australian Style

Carolyn was able to purchase some gorgeous Australian fabric and put it into this beautiful quilt. My challenge was to quilt it without taking anything away from these fabrics as the focal point.


Initially, I had planned to use monofilament in the blocks, but after deciding on this simple motif, I felt that the black just added another bit of interest without taking anything away. The horizontal blocks have four wavy lines in them; the vertical blocks have three. I don't know why the different amounts, its just how it worked out.


This is the back. Carolyn always does fun things with the backs of her quilts. Its like having two quilts in one. If you click on this pic for a larger view, it really shows the quilting that was done on the front. I used lines to emphasize the frames around each Australian fabric and alternating "C"s in the border.


The view a bit closer. Not sure why the pic is so washed out, sorry.


Thanks for stopping by!!



Thursday, November 15, 2012

First Christmas Quilt of the Season

Karen from Karen's Sewing Center in Sequim called me the other day with a request to quilt a shop quilt for her. She had this adorable Christmas fabric which she put into a quilt to show it off. How could I refuse?


I wanted to do something that had some movement around the borders and then I just had to outline the postcard looking pics of snowmen. The outlining is hard to see from the front, but the back pics below show more of what I did. I did one of my standard sashing treatments called "heatwave."



Is this fabric not adorable??? And I love that its not in the traditional Christmas colors.

A couple shots of the back. You can see the wavy lines for movement and where I did an SID-type treatment around the postcards. I stippled in between to have the postcards really stand out.


Another close-up...just because.


Thanks for stopping by!!



Monday, November 12, 2012

Henry Glass Very Merry Holiday Party

Did you guys know about this??  I love Henry Glass fabrics and found out about the Holiday Party on Face Book, thanks to Kim Diehl.

  

They do a blog hop every year, which was kicked off yesterday (as usual, I'm a day late!). You go to the designated blogs where you'll find info about the person writing the blog as well as a tute on a fun project. Yesterday was Linda Lum DeBono with an adorable little wallet you can make. It looks so easy, and her directions are very thorough. And if you like chocolate, she has a recipe in this post for kettle corn with white chocolate and peppermint! YUMMMMMM!!!

I won't give away today's, but go here to start your blog hop.  Have fun!!! And don't forget to try to guess the designers pictured on the Henry Glass Blog for some terrific prizes.

Happy Hopping!!
Dory

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Finally...a Quilt to Share

 This is Marei's quilt that I've been working on for what seems like forever. Many thread changes and even some thread issues, which has prompted me to try a new brand of thread for stitching in the ditch. More on that when I get the new stuff.

Anyway, this is Marie's tribute to the Ricky Tims' Convergence quilt style. As you can see, she left two really large open spaces for me to "play with." Luckily, Marie was very patient. I've had this quilt forever; however, I didn't want to do it until I'd taken a few classes at MQX as well as the"Quilting Negative Spaces" class on Craftsy with Angela Walters.  (That class is so worth your time!)



Marei didn't want anything swirly in the open spaces, so I opted for some tiles to fill the area up. I added a few suns for some pizzazz. There are suns in the dark orange fabric, which gave me the idea.





In the "convergence" part of the quilt, I opted for puzzle pieces in the black and white and swirls in the dark orange.  Until the dark orange blocks got a bit too big and the swirls would have been lost. In those rows, I did some simple cross-hatching based on each individual block.  


Thanks for stopping by!!


Monday, November 5, 2012

Quilting Interrupted...

So frustrated!  After a week of company and no quilting, I was all set to get into the studio and back to Marei's quilt.  I'm quilting this one ala Angela Walters and am really having fun with it.  However, Murphy apparently had another plan.

My studio is not cooperating. I have somehow blown a fuse and no matter how many times I turn the darn thing off and on, its just not working. <sigh>

Be that as it may, I did take a few teaser pictures to show you what you have to look forward to.  Guess that will have to do for now...






More when the electricity cooperates and I get this baby finished!!

Dory



Thursday, November 1, 2012

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

So...help me decide!!

While I was in Quincy in September, I was able to attend my Quincy Guild's retreat. We did a mystery quilt for which, based on some sage advise, I'd purchased my four fabrics using a monochromatic color scheme.

First I found a beautiful fabric for an accent, then I accented it. My instructions: choose a light, medium light, medium dark and dark. The block for the mystery was quite a surprise. Not only was each quilt different due to fabric choices, they were different because the quilts can be assembled in a myriad of ways.

These are the three I'm trying to choose between:

Stars...

Sort of a Southwest feel:


Or a hodge-podge effect?


Hard to tell in the pics, but the background fabric has tiny blue dots on it, so it actually looks much better in person.

So...design wise: opinions??

Dory