2010- The Year in Quilts

Sometimes, I feel like I am not very productive as a quilter.  Truthfully, I did not complete very many of my own quilts last year.  The reason?  I quilted quite a few for other people!  I just added some pictures to my Webshots album for 2010.  Here is a slide show that I hope you will enjoy.

2010 Longarm Quilting

Another Cute Quilt

This quilt that I just finished for my friend and customer Karen uses such fresh, cheerful prints in both pastel and bright hues of pink, green, and yellow.

I did an overall design similar to one of Darlene Epps' in her freehand series of books.  The customer chose "Rose" thread, very appropriate!

The back is green and pink polka dots of all sizes.  Very cute!

Something "Fishy" Kid's Quilt

Yesterday I quilted a little girl's quilt for my friend Karen.   I loved this fun little quilt!

The fish each have three stripes made from chenille by the inch strips.  I quilted the child's name in this fish block.

I used a light blue thread and did watery-looking stippling.  I did not quilt into the fish, which makes them look slightly dimensional.

 The corners of the quilt have starfish blocks, and the chenille becomes seaweed.

I know this will be a well-loved quilt for a lucky little lady!

Purple Lucky Stars

I finished another customer quilt yesterday. 

 This one was made from the Lucky Stars pattern by Atkinson.  This is a fat quarter pattern that is very forgiving to make, since the star points do not end at the quarter-inch seam allowance. 

                                     

 My friend Mary Nennstiel from the Whacky Ladies made this one for her seven-year old granddaughter who loves purple.

I couldn't decide what overall design to use, so I decided to treat this as a magical star garden.  I stitched star bursts...

starry flowers...

 flowers, hearts, and swirls...

more swirls...

No tension problems or knots on the back this time after my machine tweaking the other day.  How fun to do a quilt and not have to do any "reverse sewing!"

Finally Finished

Here is the very soft and pretty yellow quilt that I have been laboring over for some time now.  It has rail fence blocks surrounded by the floral print.  With so many flowers in the print, I got the brilliant idea to just outline the flowers and leaves as I quilted.  I regretted that decision all through the process.  It got pretty boring to do the same rose or floral group over and over. 

The backing fabric is what I would call white-on-white, except it is ivory.  The quilting is done in Seafoam green cotton thread by Signature.  That color blends nicely on the front, but shows up dramatically on the back.

Trust me, there is a LOT of quilting in this project!

I have one more quilt left to do for Teresa.

In the meantime, I have been making some yummy new backgrounds for my next journal pages in the Artistic Journaling online class.

This one is in my Moleskine sketchbook.  I used acrylic paints.  I think I am going to use these pages to journal about some of my favorite things.

This one is in the Watercolor Field Notebook.  Can you tell that I hope it to be about the ocean?

Both of these used a process of smearing the page with gesso to coat it, and then using your non-dominant hand to add text with a black marker.  Then, you have fun adding layers of paint.   After that, you continue to add marks and areas of interest with more paint, gesso, spattering water, etc.  The one that looks like the ocean has some Lumiere paint to add a gleam.  This process is so much fun, but you have to be patient to wait for the paint to dry between layers.

Here is one more background I have started, but not for the journaling class.  I just thought I would play around while I was painting the journal pages.  This one is on a piece of canvas board.  I gessoed through a piece of lace, then started adding various paints and inks.  I am thinking that this background might be for a mixed media mermaid!

Log Cabin Star quilt

It has been a fun weekend of March Madness. Here in the Raleigh, NC area, basketball is hot, hot, hot, and the local team is North Carolina State University, my alma mater. However, area fans are also divided among the UNC and Duke fans, and several other schools from the area. It has been a dismal season to be a State fan, but they gave us a good run in the tournament, making it to the semi-final game and losing by only 3 points to Georgia Tech. Who then lost by a small margin to Duke. One of the few joyous moments of this season was when State somehow beat Duke earlier in the year. Maybe we will be invited to the NIT.

Anyway, between games I finished a customer quilt that I really love. It is Teresa's Log Cabin Star.

I picked up some of the motifs from the fabrics for free-motion quilting.

The thread appears white in some of the photos, but is actually the very versatile "Mother Goose" Signature cotton- a sort of earthy brown color.

The lovely fabric in the stripes of the log cabin almost create a glow in this quilt.

In the center star, I chalked one of my new feather stencils that I purchased at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival from The Stencil Company. Then I free-handed a foliage stem into each star point.


The backing fabric was a dark green floral print, and the quilting designs really show up well.

After this quilt, I spent several hours vacuuming my quilting room. As you can imagine when you work constantly with quilt batting, cotton fabrics, and cotton quilting thread, there is a lot of lint that collects everywhere...including on my ceiling fan. Or is that just normal dust? I found at least five run-away bobbins and untold pins. I even vacuumed my canvas leaders to get all the lint and stray threads off. Not my favorite way to spend an afternoon, but I am glad to start in a clean(er) studio next time.

Wednesday Work-in-Progress: Little Girl Quilt

I managed to sneak one of my own quilts on to the machine the other day. This top is typical of the type of piecing I am doing these days...squares, four-patches, occasionally a double square...easy peasy. This one has a couple hearts machine-appliqued on the larger blocks.



I used a variegated Signature cotton thread called Tie Dye, and did some free-motion quilting with flowers, loops, and hearts.

In the block below, I chose to do "floral enhancement."

The back looks like patchwork, too. I probably should have used this for some "faux patchwork" on a border or charity quilt. But the colors go so well with the top. I hope to finish the binding and label today.

Here is a tip from my personal experience: check the pockets of your pants before loading the laundry in the washing machine. My failure to do that resulted in a clean, shiny cell phone that had to be replaced. It actually still worked after going through the wash, but the display screen was too faint to see. Now I have a cheapo black phone instead of my shiny purple one, but I got away with less than thirty-five dollars to pay for that little boo-boo. And I am not a big cell phone user since I am home most of the time. Actually, this one is easier for me to operate with less confusing buttons.

Here is another tip: I went to Michael's Craft store yesterday. All their Prismacolor pencils and Strathmore art sketchpads and paper were on sale for 50% off.