Perky and Pretty

For my last two customer quilts, I put the Beatles on the Ipod, put my brain in Sixties and Seventies mode, and had lots of fun with Flower Power!

Martha Armstrong is a Stampin' Up teacher and demonstrator, and has been teaching classes on making quilt tops from die-cut appliques.  Sometimes after a class, she brings her students over to me to do the quilting.  They make the tops in several hours, with the appliques clinging to the background fabric with glue stick.

This one was made by Jean from Mechanicsville, Virginia. 

                           

Instead of stacking the center shape in the middle, she chose to offset it for a different look.

I took my quilting design from the swirly background fabric.  The quilting is all swirls in a buttercup yellow thread.

 The backing fabric is this pretty teal floral print that coordinates with the Moda Bake Shop "Layer Cakes" she used for the appliques.

The second quilt is like deja-vu all over again...almost.  Tammy used the same Layer Cake fabric , but on a pale yellow background.

On this one, I decided to quilt in some flowers and leaves as well as swirls.

When I got to the very last row, I noticed that one of the flowers had lost its center applique.  Here is another reason for the four inches of extra fabric that longarmers like to have on each side.  I made a pattern from one of the centers and cut out a new one from a piece of the extra side fabric.  This is the first time one of those glued pieces has "unstuck" itself and gotten lost!

The backing of Tammy's quilt is the same as Jean's, but in a different colorway.  I used it to draw out some potential quilting motifs.  In that way, the quilting really becomes part of the design. 

In this case, I used a piece of Golden Threads tracing paper and drew freehand shapes.  You could also trace the shapes directly.  Caution:  use washable markers if you plan to keep the "style sheet" on the quilt top as a reference while you work.  Or, if the design is complicated, you can stitch right through the paper.  I have done that sometimes when quilting animals or other designs from Laura Lee Fritz' book, 250 Continuous Line Quilting Designs.  I prefer to just stitch freehand so I don't have to pick out all the little bits of paper!  Here is an example of a quilt that I stitched through the tracing paper.

Happy Quilting!



Autumn Colors "Flower Power" Quilt

My customer Susan of Stampin-Up brought me another die-cut flower applique quilt in lovely fall colors. She sells the Big-Shot die cut machine, which can cut eight layers of fabric at a time. She buys the Moda "Layer Cake" fabric selections of 10-inch squares, and uses three sizes of the scalloped edge flowers.

She chose a variegated King Tut cotton thread called "Old Giza." (They definitely have fun thinking up names for these Egyptian cotton threads!) It shows up very well on the yellow background and orange borders.

I free-hand quilted lots of flowers and leaves and vines. I had leaves swirling around each flower. Then I had to go into each layer of every flower to quilt around them, as they were only glue-basted to the background. If the quilt is washed, those scalloped edges will fray for a shabby chic effect.

Using a variegated thread with both dark and light areas brings up the problem of what to use as a bobbin thread.In a perfect world, you will never see evidence of "pokies" or thread showing, and shouldn't matter if you use different colors. But it is not a perfect world, is it? If you use the variegated on the back, the color changes will never match. I usually select a Super Bob bobbin with Bottom Line thread in a neutral color. This time, when I auditioned a rust-colored thread, it showed up on the yellow top threads. I ended up using a light golden brown thread called Baguette, but it did show up slightly on some of the dark blue thread areas.

The back is a dark sage green with a rust-colored leaf outline print. If I had used the rust thread on the back, it may have looked a little confusing, but the Baguette shows up nicely.

One customer quilt to go before Christmas...and it is MONGO! But very pretty.

More "Flower Power"

After I quilted Susan's quilt with "Big Shot" die-cut flowers a couple weeks ago, she showed it to another Stampin'-Up demonstrator, Martha Armstrong of Zebulon, NC. Martha brought me her flower quilt on Tuesday afternoon, and I was able to finish it yesterday evening. And she was here bright and early this morning to pick it up, so she can show it in time for a craft fair on Saturday! Martha has a blog where she features many of her lovely cards and other projects.

Martha also used a "layer cake" collection of 10-inch coordinated squares. I've got to say, I love these fabrics and the way they work together. Martha's fabrics were softer colors than Susan's eye-popping citrus colors.

I quilted it almost the same as Susan's, with lots of flowers, leaves, vines, feathers, and a butterfly or two. The three shapes comprising each flower have to be stitched around in order to attach them to the quilt. I used a wiggly circle that somewhat echoes the scalloped edge of each flower piece. The edges will fray if you choose to wash the quilt, for that soft cottage look.63 flowers x 3 pieces = 189 circular trips around. I upped my price after doing the first one of these!

Martha intends to wash her quilt to achieve the shabby chic look. This morning she told me that she had not pre-washed any of her fabrics, including this almost fire-engine red backing. Uh-oh! I guess you can't really pre-wash the jelly rolls and layer cakes that come pre-cut, or they would fray before you even use them.

I have found that reds tend to bleed more than any other color, and with the white background fabric on the top, I was a little nervous about her washing the quilt. I sent her home with a little Gladware container of Synthrapol, a liquid detergent intended to be used for washing hand-dyed fabric. With that and a Shout Color Catcher sheet, maybe her quilt will not bleed.

She is not going to wash it until after the Craft Fair just to be safe! And she has a handful of my business cards in case she runs into any quilters who want to make a quilt with the Big Shot die cut machine.

When I showed this quilt to my husband Charlie last night, that conservative gentleman informed me that he liked the glowing orange back of the quilt better than the front! Okay, this is a chick quilt, indeed!

Flower Power Quilt

How about a trip in time- back to the sixties and seventies! These bright sunny colors and happy flowers remind me of the Flower Power days when I was in college.

I quilted this one for Susan Merrell, who teaches and sells scrapbooking, craft, and stamping supplies. Her website is Stamping Up. The flowers are cut from three different sizes of templates using the Big Shot die cut machine. Susan has a special promotion sale for the Big Shot on her page. Okay, quilters, here is a new toy for your Christmas list!

Susan says she can cut eight layers of fabric at a time. The flower shapes are glue-basted to each other and to the background fabric. These fabrics are from a Layer Cake fabric set from Wish Upon A Quilt in Raleigh. A Layer Cake is a set of coordinated 10-inch fabric squares, usually from the same fabric line.

Of course, I had to secure the glue-basted shapes to the quilt, so I made wavy lines around each tier. The edges are meant to protrude for a dimensional effect.
With all these daisy-type flowers, I of course had to do some flower-power quilting! Lots of petals, leaves, vines, and swirls.

Susan wanted this quilt to be done quickly, and wouldn't you know that I experienced a lot of trouble with my bobbin tension on this project. Finally, I realized that the thread was jumping out of my intermittent tensioner on my Gammill. I fixed that problem by using a different thread-path through the three-hole guide which follows the tension disk. Can you say three hours of "unsewing" for every hour of sewing? They sure go in faster than they come out. The un-sewing procedure is known as "frogging" in the long-arm quilting world. ("Rip-it, rip-it, rip-it!") To top that off, my spool of thread was getting perilously low near the end of the project. But, I "gotter done" in time to enjoy my weekend.

No travel plans this weekend, since we have our annual pig-picking on Saturday. This time we are trying something different, hosting it at North Ridge Country Club instead of here at my house. It is supposed to rain, but we can move indoors easily there---much more so than if we were all trying to fit in my house. My dad is coming down from Boone this afternoon, and I am looking forward to a much more relaxing time than when I am the hostess, trying to have my house and yard all in good shape at the same time. Hard to do when you are a quilter!

One year, with the help of my darling daughter-in-law and her friend Aimee, I even hung quilts from my back deck for a garden party quilt show. I must have had much more energy back then!

Tonight we will have the sauce-making party...my husband Charlie cooks the pig on our own cooker using my brother-in-law Kenny's secret sauce...it's vinegar and tomato-based, but that's all I can tell you!