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 th...

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... w...

A post at longarm quilting forums referenced these little thread catchers and she had made up several for herself.   One for her car, one to sit by  her hand sewing chair...  She said they only take about 15 minutes to make and that sounded like the perfect project that I could work in this morning. The original blog post is found @ Needling Things as well as her complete instructions.   I knew immediately that this would make the perfect replacement for the coffee filter I have taped to the top of my longarm head to hold all those snips of thread from starts and stops while quilting.   With a 12' table... and your machinehead being anywhere on that table makes it inconvenient to get to a stationary trash can.  Wouldn't these buttons be cute on mine? I placed 2 fabrics right sides together and cut a 12" square.   From there, I did not make a paper pattern and merely used my ruler to cut 2 60* cuts. You th...

This was a fun little quilt that I quilted almost all freehand, just a little ruler work with the diamond shapes in the brown sashing borders and almost no spacing registration needed for this quilt.   The cactus panels used in the quilt did not lend itself to showcase any of the design and I thought it may be so busy that the quilting was not going to show anyway.  I needed something to quilt it well but not be elaborate.  Opted to use a wavy crosshatch ....  and sure enough, it really does not show well so I'm pleased that I did not do anything complicated.  Had to play with the lighting to get it to show in the picture!  I think this is a really cute quilt and wish it were mine to keep.

This is a cute little quilt that I quilted for Charity Bee.   They need things for boys so I tried to quilt this w/o feathers, flowers or curly-Qs.   I quilted this with a freehand swirl.  Kitties! Backing

Done.  I love it and with the Americana colors, I could use this year round if I wanted.   Decisions on binding to use.  The pattern calls for the binding to be cut with the fabric used for the 4 blocks in the corners (blue star in my quilt).  I know this will look good.   But I also have just enough dark blue binding left over from Riverbed Reflections to bind this.... decisions, decisions.... An unexpected finish - I like the way the quilting in the body of the quilt "morphs" into the crosshatched border.  Opted to not SID between the body and the border to keep that look.