Quilt Bug

My sister, and her husband and kids came for a visit as they were passing through moving from Kansas to Germany. They stayed with us for 3 wonderful weeks and it went all too quickly! While she was here she asked if I could help her quilt her bug quilt. She did such an awesome job putting this quilt together, and it is only her 2nd quilt! She has definitely caught the Quilt Bug!

There are so many cute little frogs, snails and bugs that she paper pieced together. She added extra batting to create some depth in the design.

Besides meandering on the black fabric around the jars, I stitched a spiderweb in metallic thread following hand drawn lines my sister made. If you look closely I also quilted a wood grain on the brown batik fabric that makes up the bookshelf. That was great fun!

The picture above is my sister busy adding the binding onto the quilt. Maybe I will be lucky and she we send me a picture of the finished product! I can't wait to see it.

Feelin' The Love

Can you feel the love for these fabrics? I sure do! Wow, I need a life! Anyway, I collected these at our big quilt show a month back or so. I have big plans for these puppies ( just like all the rest of my beautiful fabric at home in my stash). It seems like I am leaning towards these colors lately. Not by the looks of your blog you say? Yup, not a hint of pink in the bunch! Maybe I'll make something soon. I am determined to get some UFOs done first though! It's hard when I am so easily distracted by "shiny objects". You'd think this was chocolate!

Square Garden Quilt

I have finally completed one of the 3 full size quilts I've had ready to quilt. I'm so pleased with how this turned out.

I used 2 charm packs and several other pink, green, and yellow fabrics from my stash. As you can tell from my blog I have a thing for pink and green (I think the tide may be turning on that though). There is no shortage in my stash of those colors for sure!

I absolutely love how the quilting turned out. It took several days but was so worth it.

My intent is for this quilt to live on my bed, but I'm so afraid that my dog will take a liking to it. I have washed the quilt since these photos were taken and I can say I love it even more in all it's wrinkled glory!

Thankful knees

This wonderful quilt top has been waiting to be quilted for quite a while. Being a full size quilt I was procrastinating on putting my quilt sandwich together. Finding floor space to spread the quilt out to pin baste it together while damaging my knees in the process is not what I call fun. While I was attending the big quilt show this spring, I met a woman standing by the wonderful Gammill quilt machine. She mentioned that she was a nearby quilt shop owner and frequently basted peoples quilt sandwiches together so they could then take it home and quilt it themselves! While she was at it I had her do two other full size quilts for me. She is an answer to my prayers and my knees and back are forever thankful!
Instead of quilting this on my Bernina, I decided to get creative. I came up with a quilt design and digitized it for our commercial embroidery machine. I am hoping to get this quilted and put the binding on so I can post the completed quilt next week.

Freedom

Let me just say WWaaahhooo!! Ya know that feeling you get when summer is here and you peel off your wool socks and shoes that have been so confining? There's that moment you slip on your most comfortable pair of flip flops that have been beckoning from the back of your closest all winter long? Oh yes, this is freedom! I must say making this quilt was a very freeing experience for me. You should have seen my grin at the completion of my first block...yippee!I was inspired by this quilt and Amanda Jean to create this baby. No pattern, no rotary cutter or mat. It was just me, scissors, fabric scraps and my trusty machine (and my dog that couldn't understand what all the excitement was about). Log cabin quilts are a favorite of mine, so this was a fun way to add a "wonky", modern twist. I pieced the binding out of scraps and machine quilted it with a meandering flower pattern. As a quilter, part of being creative for me has always been taking a pattern and making it my own. Whether it was using different fabrics or modifying the pattern. Thanks to many bloggers out there I am now stretching my creative muscles further by finding inspiration in what they create. I'm putting on my flip flops and wiggling my toes....freedom!

Rose Medallion

After completing the Basket of Hope project from my previous post, I wanted to continue in my journey of machine applique. The wall hanging pattern I used is called Rose Medallion from the book Vintage Blooms by Pat Sloan. I also used her line of fabric called Old Blooms. I'm usually not one to go "by the book" when creating from a pattern, but I sure did on this one. This time with the machine applique I used matching thread to the fabric rather than all one color thread and I'm much happier with the results.

I took liberties with my quilting and did my own thing. Isn't that what it's all about?

Basket of Hope

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to attend a class at my local quilt shop taught by Pat Sloane. She is a very skilled quilt maker and pattern writer. I was never very interested in traditional applique and fiddling with the needle turn method. When I heard there was another way to do applique and there was an opportunity to take a class by someone like Pat Sloane, I was all over it! This pattern is called "Basket Of Hope", and is actually just a small part of a larger pattern. This wall hanging top is what I was able to do during our class time. I finished the quilting and binding at home.

As you can see the applique is held down by decorative blanket stitches...by machine. My little fingers were very relieved.

I really enjoy adding my own creative touches with quilting.