From Practice to Quilt

After taking Kathleen's class, I knew what I was going to do with Carolyn's quilt. Prior to that, I was stumped!!

I'm not sure why the fabric looks so pink...its actually a beautiful red on the back.

Kathleen taught us to look for patterns made by the piecing as well as areas to highlight. The stars had to be highlighted, so I framed them with very dense quilting.

Here are closeups of a few more.

In this last one, you can also see the border.  I did a wide bead board with pebbles between the "boards" in gold thread. Military Gold by Glide is my favorite "go to" gold thread.

A couple more shots of the back. I wish the fabric color had photographed more true. It probably would have if I knew what I was doing--I just point and shoot!! I'm a quilter, not a photographer, in case you hadn't noticed!!! 

Thanks for looking!

Dory

I've Been Practiciing

A few weeks ago I went to Victoria with another longarm quilter to take a class with Kathleen of Kathleen Quilts!

Kathleen is amazing and a terrific teacher! The class was for domestic machine quilters, but she was nice enough to let us take it with only our sketchbooks. The best part of this was that while others were sewing, we were getting more options for the designs. It was a great day and a great class.

Kathleen showed us quilting done with these two great stencils by Jodi Robinson--which I immediately had to have! This one has so many options with these circles.

And this one--the design potential is just unlimited!



This is what my top looked like with after marking with the above stencil.  I had to put directional lines and "x"s in the blocks so I could keep track of where to sew!!

If you'd like to purchase the stencils, or any of the other wonderful aids on Jodi's site, click HERE

This is my finished sample. As you can see, I must have gotten a little too involved listening to "Outlander" while I was quilting.  Can you spot my mistakes????

Remember, if you click on the pic, you get a larger view.

Dory

Beautiful Celtic Quilt

Shiela from the Cabin Fever Quilt Guild in Port Townsend gave me this quilt to finish for her. I loved her color choices.

Its hard to see from the photos, but she actually did the "transparency" thing where the purple covered the gray and the gray covered the purple. Its such a neat affect! This photo shows a bit more of what I'm talking about.

This one is closer still. Lots of different designs and basic quilting filled this one up. I really tried to emphasize the "celtic" bits!

Thanks for stopping by!

Dory

Happy Thanksgiving!

Who doesn't love Snoopy!!!!

J. Alfred Prufrock

My customer's sister and her husband cruised on their boat, the Prufrock, listening to T.S. Elliott's "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock." Leslie made this quilt for her sister to celebrate their journeys. She was disappointed in herself that one of the boats faced the wrong way, but I saw that as a total design opportunity!

Leslie named the quilt "Taking a Flyer." I quilted all the boat blocks like this. It was fun to put sun in all of these. Made me think of all the boats sailing off into the sunset.

This one got special treatment. Dennis has two professional embroidery machines, so I enlisted him to embroider the boat's name on this one block. I was so happy that one of the boats was not following the crowd!

A shot of a bit of the back. This shows the border and the treatment I did there.

Hope you enjoyed the pics!!

Dory

1930s UGRR

Isn't this pretty? Carolyn did this Underground Railroad quilt with 30s fabrics and six-inch blocks. I've quilted many of these, but this is a first for the smaller blocks and 30s fabrics.

 I did lots of SID and linework for this one.  I wanted to emphasize the piecing and make it pop, so I quilted the backgrounds quite densely and didn't do much in the actual "design" portion of the blocks.

 

Lots of linework....and a little ribbon candy thrown in for good measure!

And a final close-up of one of the blocks. You can almost see how the actual Drunkard's Path portions pop up 3D-ish.

No pics of the back...the fabric was too busy for the quilting to show.  Sorry!!

Dory

Another UGRR

I love these quilts and the story behind them. This one is from a new quilter--she did a great job with her piecing, pressing and fabric choices! It looks very "period correct," if there is such a thing!

Below are some closeups of the quilting in the blocks. I had fun with this one!!

Do you have a favorite?  Mine is the boat...it was fun putting a sun in it!!

Dory

Hospice Quilt

Every year the Sequim Bay Yacht Club puts on an event called "Race for the Stars." They race sailboats in the Bay and raise money for Hospice. I made a quilt a few years back for them to raffle at the dinner. This year, they made the quilt and asked me to quilt it.  Here are a couple shots of it...it will make some little kid happy!

Dory

Megan's Beautiful Hand Applique

Isn't this one stunning???? (You may want to grab some coffee--lots of photos coming up!) And for those of you who are looking closely, yes this is a photo of the unquilted top.  It was the best one I had that really showed the colors and the amount of work that Megan put into it.

Megan and I seem to have started a pattern of collaborating every other year. She certainly does the hard work though. All that hand applique...amazing!  Here are a couple of shots that show the blocks

I wanted to highlight the applique on this one and I had three separate areas to do that. I combined three quilting designs in the backgroud to highlight the applique and still bring all three sections together.  If you look at the first picture, you see the outside border with the hearts (area 1) the inner border with the sashing frame (area 2) and then the center with another sashing frame (area 3). I stippled in the outer sashing and then did both horizontal and vertical lines in the center.

 

The outer border was a challenge and didn't get quilted until I'd finished the inside. I knew I wanted more linework and feathers, but I wasn't sure how I wanted them. The difficulty was the hearts--the corner hearts were a different size.  I ended up filling the corner hearts with feathers and then only doing feathers on two of the larger hearts in the border.  I know it doesn't show, but in the top and bottom border, I did feathers in the center two hearts--on the sides, I did them in the outside. Then I filled in with lines.

A corner heart...

Below are just some close-ups to show off Megan's beautiful work. I quilted in some of the applique, but not all.  I wanted it to have a 3D effect. 

The back was this fabric which had a bit too much going on to really show the quilting. However, I thought this block looked neat on the back.

This quilt was in a show this last weekend. I'm waiting to hear how it did. Its stunning in person!

Dory

Quincy Crazy Quilters Opportunity Quilt 2017

I love, love, love this quilt! The pattern is made with those "X Blocks" and the fabric choices made this quilt beautiful! The colors were so vibrant--unfortunately, my photography skills leave a lot to be desired.

The hardest part was deciding what to highlight with the quilting. So many options, but I chose to just accent the different colors.  I did feathers in the diamonds and linework in the cream.

Because the corners were so unique, I decided to create a "shadow" block using the diamond shape.

Finally, a shot of the back. Unfortunately, the quilting doesn't show up really well, but you can see the texture.

I sure hope they sell lots of tickets!!

Dory

Some "Allovers"

Sharing some pics here of recent allovers that have come and gone since my last post.

First up: This shop sample from Karen's Quilt Shop.  This is the top, but I really loved...

...the back.  Isn't it cool??  As you can see, I just did a geometric pattern in keeping with the top.

A close up (of the back!!) to show the quilting.  Those darn birds are adorable!!

This one has a bit of sad back story. Customer called and needed this quilted right away for a little girl who was very sick. Luckily I was between quilts and was able to do it for her that day! I hope she liked it!

 This was just a simple loop allover--the style of quilting I recommend for kids quilts. After all, they won't appreciate the quilting, but they will love the quilt. 

Clara made this one for her kids in Alaska, if I remember correctly. She had seen an allover with leaves that I'd done for Karen's shop and asked me to do the same on this one.

Ginny wanted to use this fabric to make a jacket and asked me to quilt leaves all over it.  I ran into her the other day and she reported it was the first time she'd finished a jacket in a day.  I'm thinking having the fabric pre-quilted helped!!!

 More custom stuff up next...

Dory