This log cabin was pieced by Kathy D and I wanted to keep this for my bedroom. I seriously need a new quilt and this would work perfectly!
Kathy had a request for the quilting – nothing dense, large open and airy quilting, and treat the outer logs as a border. That last request was really hard to design around as I normally would have treated the light and dark settings as a continuous path for feathers or something similar. I needed something to fit the customer’s requests as well as tack down the log intersections. So, I came up with a sawed in half feathered wreath design. That’s the best description I can come up with for it. 🙂 I used white thread top and bottom. (So Fine and Bottom Line)
Mary M brings me some really lovely tops. I loved how t his turned out. I did checkerboards and feathers and hearts on this. I can’t remember the color of thread, but I think I used a gray So Fine. 80/20 Blend batting.
I don’t know the name of this quilt pattern, but it’s an Irish Chain with a second block used a border. I used feather wreaths, curly vines and some ruler work. I thought it was an interesting pattern. Mary M is a great piecer and this quilt like all of her quilts had no problems. Love her!
This quilt was pieced by a very good piecer, Jan. Oh, why, oh why can’t I just keep these quilts!!? 🙂
She did a fabulous job with this quilt. I loved everything about her quilt. It looks so nice in my house, I wanted to just keep this for a while. We decided on a modified feather wreath in each of the blocks and a feather vine with beadboard in the outer border and SID around all of the sashing. It went fairly fast. I used the same blush colored So Fine thread over all the top and a darker brown on the bottom. I also added the binding while it was on the frame, which makes it so nice to finish it by hand.
I met a nice lady, Tylene, earlier this summer. She and her mother had been to the Amish quilt show in Arthur and had seen my Spring Shadows quilt (which won viewer’s choice) and they were so impressed with it that they tracked me down. Tylene’s mother brought me a simple quilt to do an allover design on. During that first meeting, Tylene talked about her very first quilt that she had ever attempted. It was a paper-pieced New York Beauty quilt. I seriously cannot get over the fact that she did a paper pieced pattern for her FIRST quilt. When she finished it, she took it to a local quilt shop to have it quilted. She told me she nearly cried when she picked it up because she felt they had ruined it. We discussed it for a while and I told her to bring it with her when she and her mother came back to pick up her quilt.
What she brought was a beautiful quilt that was quilted with a so-so design. I think the worst offense was the quilter had used a 40-wt variegated thread over the entire quilt (even stitching in the ditch). She wanted to know what I would have done, and I told her that the number one thing was the thread weight and color. I’d have used a very thin thread and tried to match the color as much as possible. I would have also played up those beautiful points. I mean, what’s the point of going to all that work piecing this pattern and not have your quilting highlight it?! So, Tylene took her quilt home and removed all the original quilter’s stitching, purchased a new backing and brought it back to me to quilt.
I used 60wt Bottom Line thread on top and bottom – a medium brown on top and a lighter brown on bottom. I also doubled up the batting, using Quilters Dream wool over 80/20 Legacy blend. I played up the points and stitched in the ditch on all of them and did a 1/4″ echo with graduated circles in each of the “background spikes. I also echoed that same type of motif in the squares border. You can see the details a bit better on the backing fabric. While the piecing wasn’t perfect, it was very good for her first time. I encouraged her to enter it into the regional quilt show in Effingham, IL and she took home Best of Show. I had to explain to her what that meant. 🙂 She’s thrilled with the results, and so am I. She had it appraised while at the show and the appraiser urged her to enter it in the Paducah Quilt Show next year. I just wish I could have kept it a while longer.
Here you can see some of the design that was done originally. I wish I had taken a picture of it prior to her removing the stitches.Tylene and her “Fireworks” quilt with the Best of Show ribbon.
My cousin Cheryl R is one awesome lady! She is an amazing quilter. Her cross-stitching is so good, you’d think you were looking at a painting – seriously good! She has amazing kids and grandkids. And she was brave enough to be one of my very first customers. Love her!
These two quilts are the latest ones I’ve quilted for her — and it may be quite a while before I can do another one for her as she just broke her wrist while out shopping. Hmmm. I know shopping can be a physical sport, but it’s not even Black Friday! 🙂
The first one is a quilt pattern I’ve quilted 2 or 3 times already and have one more yet to do in my queue. The 2nd one is a miniature quilt that I absolutely LOVE!
I did this as an experiment with Inktense pencils while I was on vacation in August. Yes, I know. I’ve been seriously negligent – again – in posting pictures. I’ll make it up to you and post several quilts I’ve finished over the next few weeks.
So, I loaded this on the frame and quilted the design, then colored it using Inktense and Prismacolor pencils. I learned a lot with this experiment. I had done a design once before using the Prismacolor pencils, but this was the first time using Inktense. I learned that I’m a bit sloppy and need to take that into account the next time I do one of these. I also learned (after I was finished) that I needed to thin the textile medium with water. I used Delta Ceramcoat as my textile medium. After I was finished with the pencils, I used a thin, black prismacolor pen to outline the color. All in all, I kind of like it. There are some major problems with it – one was that my diamond crosshatching didn’t quite finish properly and is really noticeable since I used two different colors of blue in the diamonds. It doesn’t really go with anything in my house and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. Right now, it’s on one of the rungs of an old apple orchard ladder I use to display quilts in my house. I did enter it into the Effingham Crossroads Quilt Show in September and it won a 2nd place ribbon.
Adding colorFinished — pre washingAfter binding and washing.
I loved doing this baby quilt. In fact, I love doing all baby quilts as they usually give me a chance to really play. My goal is to add a lot of texture to complement the quilt top. I think this one turned out nicely. The piecer is the same lady who pieced the pinwheel quilt and I’m inspired by her use of simple blocks. Quilting it with an eye to texture resulted in a timeless quilt that will never go out of style, regardless of the fabrics used. Just two pics – I can’t believe I didn’t take more! The backing fabric was a zigzag flannel and the quilting didn’t show up well on that busy print.
I recently finished these two baby quilts. I LOVE them both. I especially love the pinwheels, but both are just super adorable.
The log cabin blocks reminded me of butterflies for some reason. I know, I’m weird that way. So, I did individual butterflies in the scrappy parts of the log cabins and frilly feathers in the white parts. The white fabric on this was a somewhat sheer fabric with a raised design and it turned out beautifully. I used Legacy cotton batting and white SoFine/Bottom Line threads.
The pinwheel quilt got swirls of feathers and radiating lines. I really, really like how that turned out. I wanted to keep this one for myself. I guess I’ll need to make my own. I used Hobbs cotton batting and white SoFine/Bottom Line threads. The backing fabric was pink polk-a-dot flannel. I really liked the Hobbs batting. I think I’ll buy some more of that!
