Customer Edge to edge quilts

Pattern used is Anne Bright's "Soft and Sweet" Edge to Edge.

Quilting pattern "Daisy Maid" by Anne Bright.

Hot Cocoa by Apricot Moon

Lori's Baby Quilts

Lori's daughter is expecting twin girls in June.  She made these two quilts for the girls.

I used "Morning Dew" an edge to edge by Anne Bright.

Pattern used was Anne Bright's "Soft and Sweet" edge to edge.

Roseanna's Applique Quilt

 This is Roseanna's quilt.  I had not done extensive cross hatching before so this was a learning experience. I used a variety of methods, using cross hatch rulers, marking with my Pro Stticher and the move function.  I found that to make cross hatching even you must mark very carefully prior to stitching.  It is not enough to use your foot as a guide. Loved the way this turned out.

Overall view shows the crosshatching.  I used "C Spiral 1" by Anne Bright and a Curl Shape from Art and Stitch.

I used Anne Bright's "Eve Rose" and "A tisket" motif's for the blocks. 

The borders were "Eve Rose" by Anne Bright and free motion loops and swirls in the stop borders.

Janet's Wall Hanging

This past few months have been some of the busiest I have ever seen.  Who sold me the bill of goods saying that life would slow down when the kids left home?  I can't believe we are almost half way through 2013.  Time to update you on some of the quilts I have been working on.  My goal originally was to post every quilt I do.  Rather than trying to catch up on ones I did the first year of quilting I think I will work backwards, showing you the most recent ones first since those are the ones I am most excited about.

This quilt is one I Just finished for my new friend Janet.  This is Janet's first quilt.  Can you believe she even attempted a project of this complexity for her first quilt?  And she did a great job of it. The finished size is 42" square and is to hang above her bed.  My first thought was feathers and crosshatching.  I am so pleased with the way it turned out.

Diane's Feathered Center Quilt

Long long ago and far far away (Last March and Portland, Oregon) Diane gave me this quilt to work on telling me to take my time, she was in no rush.  She wanted a quilt back that she could enter into the quilt shows, including the Oregon State Fair.  At the time I didn't think I was qualified to do this quilt because I really do not have the skill to do free motion quilting and the center wreath was way too big for the throat space on my machine.  I had not yet invested in Art and Stitch, a software design and digitizing program for long arm quilters.  But I told her that if she trusted me to take it I would invest in and learn the program and do something wonderful on her quilt.

Overview of Diane's Centered Feather Wreath

This is the result.

Through this quilt I gained a good friend, Nancy Haacke of Wasatch Quilting, who created the feathers for the center wreath, the corner banners, tabs and large borders.

For these Block patterns I created some of the patterns, the double connected curls and the curls with the stems.

These block patterns came from a variety of smaller patterns designed by Nancy Haacke, Anne Bright and One Song Needle Arts.

This quilt was on my machine for over two months, during which I learned the new ProStitcher,  worked in the "secret" service, traveled to Portland to help with a new granddaughter and attend classes at the MQX quilt show, conducted meetings for our annual gathering as President of the HOA at Zermatt AND went to Hawaii for a week.  NO WONDER it took over 2 months.  The upside was that I was developing patterns and placement of designer patterns in my head and on my computer along the way  and the downside was that I had to turn down some other quilts along the way.

I cannot begin to describe all the things I learned along the way.  I gained a greater appreciation for the new functions of my machine and a desire to share the things I have learned with other quilters.  Who knows maybe another business or career is in the works.

My daughter will deliver the quilt to Diane when she returns home to Oregon next week (she is here for my son's wedding tomorrow). Hope she loves it as much as I do.

My friend Adele and her daughter Lychelle designed this beautiful quilt without any patterns to follow. It is based on a photo of an Amish Star.  When they brought me the quilt top I said I was hesitant to make recommendations until I had a chance to mull it over for a time. 

The Quilt top prior to quilting.

 My first instinct was feathers and they liked that idea.  So I started searching for spectacular feathers.  The shapes used in this quilt were all custom and so none of the patterns I had fit well.  I thought diamonds would be easy to find but after days of searching I finally found Nancy Haacke of Wasatch Quilting who agreed to let me bring her the quilt top to analyse.  She designed some beautiful patterns for this quilt.

This shows the detail of the diamonds.  I used two different diamond designs, one for the horizontal and a different one for the vertical diamonds.

 One of the biggest challenges in quilting this was that each diamond had to be individually sized and placed. Stitching together log cabin pieces into a diamond shape and then creating the design from there creates so many seams that are on the bias.  So when you quilt, the fabrics and seams all draw up differently depending on the density, the seam allowances, the stretch, the bias etc.  

This is the Snowflake star diamond or Vertical Diamond.  Nancy Haacke created the quilting pattern for me.

 The odd shaped corners and the direction of the diamonds presented a challenge as they were too large for my throat space and so I could only quilt certain pieces and then turn the quilt and stitch from the other direction.  

 There were times that I wondered what on earth this would look like by the time it was finished. I was so thrilled when that last piece was finished and all the fullness created by the random order of the quilting was finally eased into quilting.

SUCCESS!!!!   I finished this quilt on the night of July 24th after 57+ hours of stitching, 14 hours of unpicking and untold hours of dreaming about the patterns.  I was so grateful when Adele picked it up and told me I had far surpassed her expectations.  She was thrilled. Lychelle had just left town for 3 days and the timing was perfect for her to be able to spend those three days binding the quilt in preparation for display at the wedding on August 4th. 

Adele let me take the quilt back while Lychelle is on her honeymoon so that I could enter it in the Alpine Days Quilt Show.  I  hope they will show it well.  She bound it with a dark green which frames it very nicely.

My friend Karen was planning a birthday celebration for her mother-in-law and told me that the birthday girl had at one time requested a memory quilt. Those who know Karen, know that she doesn't do anything half-way.  She was up to her eyeballs in preparation for the party and knew that she didn't have time to make one.  I told Karen that if she wanted one done enough to hire me to do it that I would make it happen but it would not be an inexpensive endeavor.   Another family member collected and printed the photos while I designed the quilt (not really knowing how many or how large the photos would be.)  We shopped for fabric with a general idea in my mind of how to put it together and a small calculator trying to guesstimate fabric amounts. (Try designing this one on the spot in a fabric store that wants to close in ten minutes - Thank you to the Material Girls in West Jordan, who had the patience of Job while Karen vacillated between two different color schemes and stayed open for an extra hour to accomplish the task).  By the time I got the pictures, I had 8 days to design, piece, quilt and apply the binding to this quilt.  Then Sandy stayed up late into the night to hand stitch the binding.  The result was a very beautiful heirloom quilt.  Well over 72 hours of my time were devoted to this project. And it was finished just 3 hours before the party was to start. 

Each row represented one family

The photos were appliqued on  and the machine quilting stitched around the photos.

The borders were fussy cut to make sure the motifs were centered.

Each corner piece was fussy cut as well.

The backing fabric was designed to look like a wrapped gift and the ribbon portion of the fabric was antique keys. I was a nice tie in Karen chose sort of representing the restoration of the sealing keys for eternal families by Elijah.