Thread Tales From A Scrappy Quilter

This was a first for me and I think the results turned out very nicely.   A close friend of mine started quilting this for her client, meanwhile life intervened and she was not going to be able to get it finished.  With the blessing of her client, she delivered this to me to finish quilting.  I think the transition is fairly seamless!  All the black sashings had been stitched in the ditch and the sashing detail work had mostly been quilted.  I needed to come up with a plan for the blocks and borders and presented a few ideas to the owner.  This quilt pattern is called "Focus Pocus" and is so perfect for showcasing these gorgeous oriental theme prints.  We opted to go with a large feather wreath and border design for the focus fabrics.  Glide "vegas gold" thread blened perfectly with the golds in those fabrics.  The owner is going to finish with the darker border fabric and black piping in the binding.  Sounds gorgeous! ...

A couple of cute quilts!   The one with whiskey bottles is really cute and was made cutting the fabrics lengthwise.   It's supposed to be a very quick and easy pattern to make.      Baby quilt with "popcorn" panto     This pattern reverses at the bottom.   Really cute! Snuggly thick flannel backing.  Chinook panto    

Ok.  I don't really know the exact name of this block.  But it was cute made up in a gold sparkly background fabric and containing little scraps of many fabrics that have also lived in my stash as well.  It also had a zingy  pieced backing and I just had to bring this one home to quilt for a local charity.   Freehand work.  Some solid to show the quilting on the backside.   Look what happens when the whole top is viewed...it's now on point! 

Quilt backings seem to create so much confusion.   I'm going to share a few of my observations and what I like.    You or your quilter may differ ... this is my opinion only. OK, here's one of mine that worked out very well with the pieced work on the front side.  But it was just a happy coincidence.   I tried, it's off but it still looks good. Basically, I like backings to be about 8" wider and 8" longer than your top.  If seaming 2 widths of fabric together, I love to load that outer selvage to my rollers and have the seam running parallel to my bars.  10" larger is OK, anything more than that is excess fabric that I have to deal with.  Longer is OK (but you need to know which way I want to load that top!) but a lot of excess to the width looks like this as the quilt advances.   I loaded this one with about 5" excess on one side and the rest on the other side.  Otherwise I would have had to deal with this on ...

A quick baby quilt using a panel and adding a very simple border.  Baby's name was also sewn onto the stuffed dog in the panel print.  Animals had bandanas on and the bear in the flannel backing wears a bandana so I used blue and red bandana prints for the border.  Binding in a coordinating blue denim flannel.   Puff poly batting.  Colors for baby are blue, red and tan  so this matches fairly well and they will love the theme called "Two by Two" Quilted with hand guided panto "dazzle".