Thursday, January 19, 2012

This is another quilt destined for the "Quilts for Sale" booth at the Tri-County Quilt show in March!
I don't know who pieced and donated it but, it was very sweet - love the 30's repro fabrics!
I did the little tessellating hearts on one border and the circle in a circle on the second border (show below)
The back. 
Judy said she'll have about 25 quilts for sale in the booth. 
I can't wait to see the others, it would be great to come home with a new quilt!

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Circle of Friends Block of the month Quilt by Denise!

This was the very first Block of the Month project for Quilters Crossing. It features Aunt Grace reproduction fabrics put out by Marcus Brothers Fabrics.
Here is the quilt before quilting it:
After Quilting:
This quilt is quite large: Measuring: 82"x82".
Here are some progress shots, I did stitch in the ditch first around everything (which took more than 12 hours). 
 This block before (above) and after the stitch in the ditch (below). What a difference!
 I love when it starts looking all quilty! And I still have lots of free motion work left to do to really jazz up those white sections!
 (Blocks with only stitch in the ditch and ruler work quilting.)
Now for the jazzy stuff, 
after all the stitch in the ditch was completed:
 I filled these baskets with feathers (above) and detailed the pinwheels and square in a squares (below) and added the small diamonds in the thin white border too.
Sorry I went crazy with pictures because I just loved it and it was a very photogenic quilt!
Above, you can see how the quilting in the white background changes the texture so entirely where it is quilted along the right edge of the picture but, not on the left.
 Shot of the back:
Another back shot, I really love the detail, the wool batting really makes the difference here I think in the lovely shape of the "poofs" of quilting. 
 Lovely. This quilt photographs so well, I just kept snapping pictures... Denise did such a great job AND she was the first one done with the top out of the whole group! The pattern required machine piecing and hand applique techniques and all were well executed. I hope I have done her proud in the quilting.
 The center medallion:
I love how the quilt finished. It was a pleasure to work on this. 
It is entered in the Block of the Month category of the Tri County Quilt Guild Show going on March 2 +3 at the Berry Center. 
Best of luck to all entrants!

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Quilters Crossing Challenge

Okay I spent all of Christmas week consumed with one customer's quilt that I am really enjoying, whenever I was not engaged with my family. 
 It is almost done. I dare say today it will be....or tomorrow. 
We'll see.
It is just one of those quilts where I look at it and say, "oh maybe a little more here" and off I go, adding more quilting.
I posted the current Quilters Crossing Challenge on New Year's morning. The sample:
I made for my mother a few years ago as a gift. We had seen this challenge done with gift bags at the Nashville quilt show a few years ago and we thought it was a neat idea. There is a lot of art on display in the greeting card aisle I found when I went to make a selection! 
It was really fun to try and figure out how to make everything in fabric. I liked the creative problem solving. 
For example, the part of the card below where the words are was the exact same weird green color as the background but a little lighter. Odds were not good that I could match it.
 I ended up flipping the piece of fabric I used for the background over and embroidered the words on the wrong side to get the lighter color. I felt rather brilliant for a moment ( it takes very little to please me it seems...)
I used beading to achieve the sparkly effects and flower details.
I used quarter inch fusible bias tape for the branches of the plant and a metallic thread to do a tiny zig zag around all the fused teal flower petals.
My mom displays the quilt with the greeting card which she framed so you can enjoy the comparison.
I hope we get a lot of participation for this challenge. We have the cut off date at the end of March so that anyone in The Woodlands or Tri-County Quilt Guild will have already had their show quilts done and have time to work on this. I am sure the date doesn't accommodate everyone but we tried to consider the quilting schedule of the bulk of our customers.