Thread Tales From A Scrappy Quilter

Here are a few pics of what I have been working on the past week. This is a panel that the customer collected on her travels.  I outlined some of the detail and used a more dimensional batting to showcase that texture.  You can really see that texture on the backside. Picture does not reflect how bright and rich the colors are! This was such a pretty quilt, but I could not get a uniform bold color of thread to show.   Decided the best option was to go with the 4th gray from the left.  It appeared the most consistent across the quilt without fading away and then screaming look at me for a few blocks.  We wanted to do a different fill in each block but most thread colors I tried just did not showcase the work and in fact, I could not even see where I quilted.   I ripped out the first row and the customer chose the  "Koi" pantograph to quilt as an all over. As you can see, not much shows in these busy prints but there is lots of quilting going on. 

This is a customer quilt for a 5 yr old little girl.   The fabrics are so cheerful and fun!  Quilted freehand with a swirly, curly daisy and butterflies in the center diamonds.  Hobbs wool batting for added dimension and comfort. Backing fabric is gorgeous too. I made each butterfly slightly different.

If you had told me in March that I would only today complete "phase 1" of the paper piecing for this quilt top... I would never have started this project!  No, I don't work on it daily and sometimes I have weeks that I don't touch it but still...   I signed up for this Judy Niemeyer pattern/class at one of our local quilt shops.   I have another of her patterns in my sewing studio for YEARS but the 40 pages of instructions always left me a little unsure about jumping in even though I am an experienced paper piecer.  When I saw this class was offered over 3 sessions/ 1 per month I thought this would be a perfect chance to work with the pattern and I would meet people since I am new to the area.  The quilt shop also offers a "sew in" on Fridays.   Perfect.  My plan was to sew on Fridays and have this complete @ the end of 3 months.   It was my intention to leave this all in my travel stuff... work on it on  Fridays and then those classroom times on Saturdays.