 Hello! This past week we had our first real snowfall for the season here in Butler, PA, and I was quilting snowflakes, too! This beautiful quilt belongs to my Aunt Brenda. I'm very happy with this finished quilt for a couple of different reasons (besides that it's just really pretty) which I'll share with you.  Reason #1: Brenda took my advice and purchased black batting for this quilt. Why is this so important?? Because the backing fabric is a dark color. Every quilt that I've done for someone who chose black or a dark colored backing fabric had little "pokies" of white batting coming through the back in the stitching holes. It REALLY shows up against the dark colored fabric. When this happens it makes me feel awful because I do everything I can to do the best possible job on people's quilts. This is beyond my control, but I just feel so badly that it happens. The first time this problem occurred I contacted some quilting experts and teachers that I know, and they confirmed that I couldn't do much to prevent it - just change the needle so that it's nice and sharp and use black batting. I have advised clients about this problem and recommended to use black batting, but usually they have already purchased what they needed for the quilt and tell me to go ahead with the white or off-white batting. You can see in the picture below how nice the stitching is and NO batting can be seen coming through. This made me so happy! If you are making a quilt with mostly darker colors on the front and a dark fabric for backing, please consider using black batting. Purchase it from your local quilt shop or find it online. It will make a big difference!  Reason #2: I got to use this snowflake pantograph called Snow Winds for the first time. I bought it last year, and no client had requested it yet. It's a nice larger scale design and it was perfect on Brenda's quilt.  The fabrics in this quilt are all batiks, even the snowflakes in the center of the squares! I bought some of this fabric the same time Brenda did, but I haven't used mine yet. As I worked on this quilt I did dig my piece out and contemplate what I might do with it. I'm still thinking...  Thank you, Aunt Brenda, for letting me quilt for you!
I'm sharing this finish over at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. Thanks for visiting and have a great week!
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 Hello and thanks for stopping by to see some quilt finishes. I am caught up with quilting for clients. That hasn't happened for months (though I'm not complaining). This quilt belongs to Laura. The pops of red are really cool in this churn dash pattern. Laura is usually a hand quilter, and it was an honor to machine quilt it for her so that she can get it finished and put it on her bed. The quilting design that I used is called Mint Julep, and it looked lovely all over this quilt.   Below is Joyce's quilt that I just finished. It is a memory quilt made using her husband's plaid shirts. It is beautifully pieced, and the plaids look great together. I quilted it with the Swift pattern.   Thank you, ladies, for letting me quilt for you!
Now I'm working on some family quilts that have been waiting patiently for attention. Local quilters - if you have something that you need finished for Christmas I can probably help you out. Please contact me. I'm also sharing over at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. See you next week!  Just for fun I have been playing with my Creative Grids Strippy Stars tool this past week or so. I had a mess of Christmas fabric out making those Christmas tree table runners that I showed you last week, and I decided to try some stars. I made different sizes using different fabrics, and this is what I decided to put together - a little Christmas wall hanging.  Creative Grids products are my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE! The Strippy Stars tool above - the triangle shaped thingy - looks unusual, but it is easy to use and makes 8 different sizes of blocks. You can watch a video about how to use it here. If you look closely at my blocks, you will notice that the star points don't go all the way out to the edge of the block. They kind of "float" on the background fabric. This is a nice technique because you don't have to worry about chopping off those points when you piece your blocks together.  You will also notice that I did some fussy cutting of the center squares in each star. That was a fun experiment, too. The background fabric that I used is a Moda Grunge that is white with some touches of green throughout. Don't rule out Grunge for Christmas!  This morning I cleaned up my Christmas fabric mess. Now I just have to get this little guy quilted. I'll be sharing over at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
 Last week my son said, "I can't wait 'till Halloween is over, then I can get into the Christmas spirit." So here we go - quilting some Christmas table runners! The pattern I used is from Anka's Treasures book "Angles With Ease" called Baby Juniper which can be found here. This is such a great pattern because you can mix and match colors and prints to make some pretty fun trees.  I made 6 different runners and quilted them one after the other. It's easy to do this on the longarm machine if you can use one long piece of batting and one piece of backing fabric. I custom quilted them using a combination of stitch in the ditch, swirl designs, and a kind of elongated figure eight in the trees.    I'm working on binding them, and then they'll be for sale in my Etsy shop. Love these cute little trees!
I'll be sharing over at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. Thanks for stopping by! |
This is me...I LOVE to quilt, and every day I must sew for my sanity! Archives
March 2020
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