Follow-up

You may recall that I have completed about five or six quilt tops made by my sister-in-law Debbie's late grandmother.   Here are some pictures Debbie sent me of some of those quilts.

The basket quilt is still my favorite of all of her grandma's quilt tops.  I custom-quilted it with feathers.  I liked it so much that I even entered it in one of my guild shows when the theme was "Everything Old is New Again."

If you look at the Hoosier cabinet in the first photo, you will spy a little quilt I made for Chris and Debbie years ago as a "thank you" for having our family for Thanksgiving.  It is a Debbie Mumm pattern called Farmer's Market.

Here are the two Blazing Star quilts that Debbie's grandmother pieced and I quilted.  These caused me much moaning, groaning, and gnashing of teeth...but don't they look great on the beds?

The two quilts are custom-quilted with continuous curves in the star points and feather wreaths in the white space.

You may also remember my post about making two small art quilts for a charity auction.  The Board of Realtor's auction was last weekend, and the proceeds go to the local Food Bank.

I am happy to say that this little guy raised $45.00

and this larger one sold for $60.00.  Very gratifying!

Both pieces are bound quilts that are mounted on artist's gallery-wrapped canvas.

Latest Customer Quilts

I have been working hard to try to finish some quilting commissions recently.  I just finished quilting a stunning log cabin Christmas quilt.  It was pieced by my customer Teresa's mother, whom I have not met.

Teresa chose an off-white cotton thread called 'Parchment," which coordinates with the warm block centers, and also allows the quilting to show up well in the white areas of the blocks.

The fabrics in this quilt could be interpreted as Christmas fabric, since there are holly leaves, red ribbon, and poinsettias.  However, it is not so "Christmasy" that the quilt cannot be used or displayed year-round. We originally planned on doing an all-over design, perhaps even a panto.  As I loaded it up, I decided it needed to have some beautiful quilting to enhance the perfect piecing.

It is not custom-quilted, but I stitched leaves, swirls, ribbons, and flowers that curve over the very linear design of this quilt.

Did I ever mention that is my favorite type of quilting?

The back is a snowy white-on-white fabric.  It has great texture with all the quilting.

And, as I was going through my quilts-in-waiting, I remembered this one that I never finished for my sister-in-law Debbie. 

There was a tension issue on the back of two areas with micro-stippling.  Ripping it out took hours and hours.  I worked on that this week, and requilted those areas.

Then, I remembered that I had already made the binding for this quilt, and was actually able to locate it in the euphemistically described "disorganized" sewing room upstairs.  I was almost finished applying it by machine when I realized that it was about two feet short of the perimeter!

I could not find any more of that blue fabric, so I searched the stash for something that might work.  Surprisingly, it was a hand-dyed blue fabric that matched almost perfectly with the tone-on-tone muted blue print of the original.  Can you tell where they join?

So, I am almost finished hemming it, and it will soon be delivered to Debbie.  It will join its mate that I delivered last Thanksgiving.

I have only had these since my father's 85th birthday weekend, which was September 2008.

Can you tell that although these turned out beautiful, I did not exactly relish working on them?

I have one more to go of these quilt tops pieced by Debbie's grandmother.  That will make about six of these quilt tops that were languishing in plastic bags in Indiana until Debbie rescued them and brought them to me to finish.



"Moby Quilt" is Done

When you work at home by yourself, it is important to find ways to amuse yourself and keep your brain occupied, yes?  One way I do that is to come up with nicknames for the projects I am working on.

The current customer quilt began as this:

And was not exactly a flat surface to quilt

And during its weeks on the longarm, it earned several monikers including "Moby Quilt", "The White Elephant," and, my personal favorite, "Cussin' Practice."  LOL!

However, it is finally quilted.  I still need to do something with about a thousand thread tails that are dangling.  I butchered squared up the corners and sides.  I was ready to make and sew down the binding, when I noticed this on the back:

                                    

Can you see the little thread blobs?  Something went wrong on the tension on the back.  So, I will quickly "unsew" this small area and put it back on the machine.  I have some clamps made from the cardboard tubes in the center of batting rolls.  If you slit the tubes, you can use them to temporarily hold the quilt on the rollers while you fix the boo-boos.

But the White Elephant is looking so pretty!  Here it is draped over my couch.  I'll get a better picture when I add the binding.



I considered having a contest to see who could correctly guess the number of hanging thread tails, but then I would have to actually count them myself. 

What a relief to get this project off the machine!

Here is a pretty package of hand-dyed fabric that I purchased from Vicki Welsh's Etsy shop:

Yes, it is one of the last days of summer, even though we are still going to be in the 90's all week here in my part of North Carolina, but I love this bright yellow-greens.  Each fat quarter has a slightly different pattern.  I highly recommend Vicki's fabrics and the super-fast service from her Etsy Shop!

Sometimes I Amaze Myself...

I never would have guessed that this old quilt top would turn out so pretty! It is off the machine now, waiting to have the thread tails trimmed, the binding put on, and, oh, yes, it needs a bath after spending the last forty years or so in a plastic bag!


This was not my favorite quilt to work on for many reasons, but now that the quilting is done, I'm singing, "You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine..."

The Quilters' Dream Puff backing was a good choice to fill in the saggy areas of the quilting.

The backing is white muslin, and it looks very textural and frothy like a wedding cake!

This quilt has a twin that is waiting for the same treatment...but I am going to do a few other smaller projects first before tacking such an intensive project again.