This was a sweet little quilt! In keeping with the heart fabric, I quilted hearts all over it, using a variegated green and tan thread. I left the centre block and outlined the design in invisible thread.
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Threads used:
This little quilt (yes, it was quite small compared to some others I’ve done) took an age to quilt. why? Well, I started by quilting the diagonal lines, then when I’d nearly finished them, I realised that something wasn’t quite right with the bobbin tension and so I unpicked all those lines. Once I got the tension sorted, I decided instead to quilt the straight horizontal lines, but once that was finished, those diagonals still stood out (they were marked and I’d stitched over them, so there were marks and needle punch holes), so I redid the diagonals. I quite like the effect once I’d finished.
But what to do for the border? I decided to pull out some rulers I bought some months ago and give them a go. Except for my favourite ‘Line Tamer’ ruler, I haven’t had much joy with rulers — they seem to cause me more frustration than anything else. I’m probably too impatient 😉 That said, I’m attending a rulers class that my awesome dealer, Michelle, is running this coming Saturday, so maybe I’ll feel more kindly about rulers in future.
Meantime, here are my attempts at ruler work. The main arcs and the lower arcs are all done with rulers; I did the echoing by eyeballing the shapes of the arcs.
And yes, more time was taken as I had to go slow with the rulers, but also because I stitched the back on itself — twice! and had to unpick it… <grrr> I think this small quilt ended up taking about five hours to quilt, when I thought it would be maybe an hour…
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I quilted this second bright eye-spy quilt at the Community Quilting Bee. As with the first one, it was such a bright quilt, that only a fluoro orange would do as the top quilting thread 😉
I quilted it with an all-over variation of the ‘open headband‘ motif — this time I squared off the points of the arcs.
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Threads used:
I quilted this bright eye-spy quilt at the Community Quilting Bee. It was such a bright quilt, that only a fluoro orange would do as the top quilting thread 😉
I quilted it with an all-over variation of the ‘open headband‘ motif — this time I added a few rounded ‘bounces’ along one of the arcs.
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Back:
Threads used:
Some 25 or so ladies involved in the Community Quilts program I quilt for had a ‘bee’ in Perth on Sunday 30 June. I’ve never been to one before, so thought it was time to make an appearance. I loaded my Sweet Sixteen into the car the night before, and left home about 7:30am to arrive at ‘Craft House’ at Alexander Park in Menora just after 9:00am. I quilted two quilts during the day, ate some lovely morning and afternoon tea goodies baked by some of the ladies, and met some lovely people.
It was quite amazing how much can get done when a group is working together. Some ladies sewed blocks, others made and sewed on binding, and others made and pin basted quilt sandwiches on the large centre tables. I took home another six quilts with me to quilt, and handed off about eight back to Gwen, the current Community Quilts organiser.
I had a lovely day, and the weather was perfect for driving too and from Perth too — a gorgeous clear and sunny winter’s day, with dry roads.
Here are some photos I took on the day, in between quilting quilts.
Gwen and Pat (?) sharing a laugh
Busy, busy
Centre tables for basting
Busy beavers! Daughters, mothers, grandmothers…
Trying to find fabric for a binding from the boxes of donated fabrics
Quilt #91 sitting on my Sweet Sixteen
Well, I don’t think I’ll get to 100 quilts in 12 months, though I’m close with 90 (I started quilting Community Quilts at the end of June 2012). This one is #90 and was originally going to be quilted by a friend of mine, but she’s sold her house and is in the process of packing and moving. I know what that’s like, so I offered to do it instead.
This was a nice little eye-spy quilt, with lots of bright colours that went well together. I decided to do an all-over design — my ‘squared off’ open headband motif. In keeping with the bright colours in the coloured blocks, I used a variegated thread I’ve had forever, in the red, blue, yellow, and green.
Even though the quilting is quite dominant, I quite liked how it turned out and how the thread choice complements the coloured blocks.
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Threads used:
This was a very old-fashioned quilt top — an old-fashioned block, old fabrics, and all the star blocks were hand-sewn. How to quilt it?
I started by stitching in the ditch ESS (‘every stinking seam’) — well, not quite every seam, but almost!
Next, were the white spaces. The area where the points all met in the middle was very bumpy for each block, so I needed something to flatten it. I decided to do a stylised flower, using a fairly close spiral for the centre, then radiating out following the shape of the white space for the petals, with a centre vein (these blocks were puffy too), and a couple of swirly bits on the side, followed by an echo line around the outside of the petals. I used a matching 80 wt thread for these as I didn’t want them to stand out too much.
But what to do about those 8-pointed stars? First I stitched in the ditch with an invisible thread through each one to reduce the puffiness and to stabilise them for the big spiral centre — I’ve done big spirals before without stabilising the layers first and ended up with weird effects, a bit like the ‘pointy bras’ of yesteryear that my Mum used to wear ;-). Next, I used the top off a container as my circle to mark the outer line with chalk. Then I stitched around the circle with a variegated mauve/purple/lemon/tan thread, then stitched another ring about 1/4″ from the outer ring, then I spiralled in to the centre and out again. Once I was back on the outer ring of the circle, I stitched flame-style ‘petals’ around the circle with the points almost touching the edges of the start. I thought they looked a bit like sunflowers when I was finished, and I was pleased with how they turned out.
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What gorgeous colours and fabrics were in this quilt! All those rich reds, and I think some of the fabrics were heavy silks too. The backing fabric was in a deep navy/black with a Kokopelli symbol. Unfortunately, the reds just don’t come out well in the photsos.
For this quilt, I decided to do an all over design using a rich red thread. I wanted to capture the feel of the grasses in one of the fabrics, so did a sort of grassy motif, which was really just a very open version of the open headbands motif I use a lot.
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Threads used:
I didn’t particularly like this quilt (non-one says I have to like them!), though the child who gets it will probably love it to death as there’s a lot going on in each block. It’s a perfect ‘I spy’ quilt.
As the quilt fabrics were so busy, I just did an all-over squared off ‘open headband’ motif. However, I had a great deal of difficulty in keeping this quilt from puckering. My tension was fine — the problem was that the quilt wasn’t a quilt sandwich with proper batting inside it. The quilt top had been laid directly onto the backing fabric, which was a polar fleece. It was as a slippery as anything on my quilting machine table, and it puckered as I stitched.
The one consolation is that the puckering is reasonably even, so perhaps the recipient will think that’s how it’s meant to be 😉
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This was such a cute quilt! All those spotted owls… The Community Quilt Coordinator gave it to me hoping I’d do a great job on it — I hope it lives up to your expectations, Gwen 😉
This quilt took me 8+ hours to quilt. First I stitched ESS (‘every stinking seam’ [from Cindy Needham]) in invisible thread, and I mean EVERY stinking seam… including around all the applique pieces of each owl. Then I used a variegated green thread to stitch a different filler motif in each block. I quite like how the different stitches give different personalities to the owls — the black one, for example, looks like he’s scared.
In keeping with the owl theme, I stitched really long bird feathers from the centre of each border out to the corners. I tried something different for these feathers — I put TWO different threads in the top, using a size 18 needle to make sure they had enough room to pass through. I thought I’d get a lot of breakage or shredding, but I got very little. The combination of the fluoro orange and the yellow thread came out a really nice yellow orangey colour.
I was quite pleased with how the whole quilt turned out. There’s a cute frog fabric on the back too 😉
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Threads used:
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 