Thread Tales From A Scrappy Quilter

I had the pleasure of quilting another of Sally Coble's applique masterpieces.   This one is a Sue Daley pattern called "Lancaster".  The clamshells are needle turn but they are long strips, not individual little clams which you might think would be the case.   Sally does impeccable handwork, her quilts are so exciting to work on!     My acrylic sheets.   I plan most quilts this way.   I don't transfer the markings, I refer to them for design.   I have 3 so that lets me keep certain elements by my side.  I can mark what ruler, how much spacing I used, etc.   I can't work without them for auditioning designs to scale.   The next problem is that the markers are thicker and of course bolder than thread.  You are really never sure what you have until you start stitching.   This client does not want blue markers used, so it is a challenge to get registration lines and sp...

Alice does amazing handwork.   She also loves paper piecing .  We first met a few years back at a Denise Green (CI for Judy Niemeyer) retreat.    Alice always has a beautiful project in the works, she does not do simple.  Alice made a variety of blocks that she loved, set with a half pineapple paper pieced border.        Photo skills lacking, I don't have my sewing studio photo area set up perfected yet.  Thanks Alice for allowing me to custom quilt your beautiful creation!   Alice requested no feathers in the outer border and to maybe use a free flowing vine design similar to the blue fabric used in the sashing and borders.   We also were going to do a scroll in the sashing but as soon as I made my first stitches in the border, I realized it was not going to show well and I couldn't even really see where I had stitched.   I decided to use a tried and true simple...

Pam completed this quilt top several months ago and planned on quilting this herself on her longarm.  Some intense back pain kept her from being able to do this in time for an upcoming guild show.   Of course we longarmers have seen online Judi  aka Green Fairy Quilts version and that was her dream for this quilt.  Unfortunately,  budget issues aside,  I did not have time in my schedule for that intense marking and quilting.  We are talking weeks!  I tried to create a simplified version in the borders for her, then used rather dense fills behind the applique.  I used echo stitching inside the appliqué similar to Judy's designs also.    No marking as she did not think she would be blocking this quilt.  The busy fabrics were difficult to highlight on my phone.   Hobbs 80/20 with Quilters Dream Wool on top.  Here's some of the better ones that show some detail.      ...