Thursday, August 24, 2017

Gillian's Tula Pink Butterfly



Gillian made this Tula Pink Butterfly quilt.  I believe her intention is to hang it in her new baby boy's room, which is at least one reason she chose the chambray background (because it's sort of "manly").  I was looking forward to quilting this quilt as I bought the kit from Craftsy and have been chipping away at the blocks when I have sew days with my friends (few and far between, hence the lack of serious progress).  I will put the borders on mine, but with the borders, it makes a very large quilt, which I expect is something Gillian did not want.  Anyway, I finally got it finished yesterday - it got caught up in a big backlog, which I am happy to report I am almost through!  I tried not to get too "girlie" with the quilting.  But in the end I did put some hearts and butterflies in it - it's for a baby and we're trying not to be too gender specific these days.  What kid doesn't want to know their Mom loves them (hearts)?  And it is a butterfly - so what's a few more?  😎😍

I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out so I hope Gillian is, too, when she comes to pick it up.
























Agnes's Butterflies

Agnes has been busy appliqueing again!  She's getting to be the expert!  She brought me this quilt - brightly coloured butterflies on a white background to quilt.  Like her dandelion quilt, this one is basically a wholecloth quilt with appliqued butterflies.

How to quilt such a thing?  I decided the butterflies were travelling through a garden so lots of "organic" designs.  I challenged myself not to use a ruler and I think I succeeded in this.  I also thought I'd try out some of the filler designs in my new book - "Quilted Textures from A to Zen" by Bethanne Nemesh.  

I started by stitching in a wavy line at an angle on each side to make a "path" for the butterflies to "fly" through.  Then on each opposite corner section, I stitched random wavy lines to make irregular closed shapes - I would quilt something in each of these - something different if I could think of that many different things....  in the channel I quilted big paisley feathers - see Angela Walters video. This was my first crack at them - they turned out all right I think.  To fill the rest between the channels, I didn't want to detract from the feathers so I did a vertical wavy line design that I found in my Christina Cameli book.

So.... random shapes, each filled with a different filler, feathers and vertical wavy lines.  Easy, right???  Oh - and I also didn't want it to be plain white everywhere so I changed up the thread colour. Some darker shades - close to the butterfly colours, then some lighter shades of the same colours. I actually wanted to use some metallic thread but couldn't get it to run in my machine, so my Plan B was some green/yellow variegated thread.  Click on the pix to see the close up - it's hard to see because so white.



















Aug 2017 Roundup

My lack of posts recently does not mean I have stopped quilting.  Nope - it just means I've been super busy.  We had two, two week trips with a couple of weeks between so I've either been away or quilting my face off to get some quilts out the door.  Here is a round up of some of them.  I think I may have missed one or two....  Oh well - can't go back.

First up - this traditional queen quilt.  It was huge!!!!  My customer wanted it quilted like it was quilted in the magazine from which she got the pattern.  So it is, more or less.





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This is Carol's "When Bali Met Sochi" quilt.  The fabric says it all so I did a swirly all over design.







And the back - Fireside, I believe.


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This is Margie's star quilt, a very traditional quilt.











She brought a fuzzy blanket to use for backing.  I believe she said she got it at Costco.  I had heard of using these blankets - probably a lot less money than buying Minke or Fireside by the meter.  It seemed to work out all right, alhtough beware the "pokies" - some of the blanket fluff does peek out but with luck will disappear over time.  Only visible if you look for them.  I did put batting in it, but not really sure that is necessary with the fuzzy blankie!  😎


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Next up is the quilt Catherine made for her parent's 60th wedding anniversary.  It's sort of an adults' eye spy quilt.  She had really fun set of prints representing many things her parents like and assembled them into this quilt.  Since no one would care much about the quilting as they would be having way more fun looking at the fun prints, I did a relatively fast design that still looks great - if you ask me!  Catherine was happy and I was told by her daughter, Gillian, that the quilt was a hit (I won't take credit for this, as it would be the fun fabric that would get the attention, which is as it should be).




I added hearts to a couple of blocks - the red ones - and of course a couple of them actually were a heart print!



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By now I have done a number of quilts for Joan.  While all my customers are special, she is especially so as she is legally blind and is still making amazing quilts.  This one is another of her appliqued quilts.  This one just screamed at me "feathers!"  So I did quite a few feathers.  And some other things, too.








And that's it for the round-up!  See you next time!  😎