Christmas Themes ........... at 32C.

For a complete chance of pace......

This current quilt sat patiently while I finished two Spring/Summer pieces. But it's turn came.

This is for a lap quilt in Christmas colours.

Holly is the theme.

After scouting for images of Holly I settled on one small drawing and adapted it for a centre piece and a wreath. This is not being 'traced' but stitched free hand using the paper patterns as a size and spacing 'suggestion'

As usual...... the design takes longer than the application.

King size Customer Quilt

While this was a lovely quilt to work on, the motifs my friend wanted were larger than the throat of my machine. Now I don't know about other LAs but I really, REALLY hate marking a quilt. I double tested the water erasable pens in many spots and then dove in.

As she wanted a large leafy wreath in the obvious centers of the blocks I drew the guide lines for the vein of the wreath (22 in dia) and how far into the center the leaves would go. Inside that a standard medallion; this one a flower with leaves.

my EQ version to doodle on

center medallion

The rest was vine fill.

Glad to say all the marks came off and my friend took her quilt home to bind. She'll have a very happy daughter this Christmas, I think.

Lovely Blue and White

This quilt is too late for the show but it's intended as a wedding quilt for my friend's son. The fabrics a mixture of prints, some batiks, some paisleys, and some tropical. I just loved the colour on this simple but oh so stunning King size quilt.

Canadian Women 150 Anniversary Quilt

I spent the last week working on this quilt. It's been awhile since I quilted a king size quilt.
This quilt was designed and offered by Next Step Quilt Design to help celebrate Canada's 150th year, last year.
It was offered on line and each quilt block came with a biography of a Canadian woman of note.

This quilt is only a year late but it was lovingly sewn by a dear friend.
My photos don't do it justice. I didn't photograph this outside on my lawn because a) the backing is white and b) there are too many birds! So enjoy what I managed to photograph.
It's a brilliant sampler quilt.

Well Its Only Been a Week!

Still haven't started on my challenge piece.
A friend brought a quilt for me to finish. How can I say no.
I still have plenty of time. 

This was a lovely rich design and she choose a deep rust to finish it with. I'm not a big fan of high contrast on the backside. As some one pointed out to me I'm hypercritical of my own work. When I'm working on someone's quilt I'm too close to it and I see every little slip and tremor. But in the end it is lovely, as you can see.

It just took a long time.
I just had another birthday and standing on my feet for days? didn't agree with my feet like it use to. I took a lot of breaks.
I think I need to raise my prices.

Oh! I missed a spot! Can you find it?
Fixed it. MY friend was kind enough to send a picture if the quilt on her bed.
I love to see where they will go.

Quilt Work Today

I still have a few comfort quilts to have ready for this Tuesday coming, when our guild meets. I will hand them off to other volunteers to add a label and finish the binding.

This was a very pretty smaller quilt so I wanted to give the lovely batiks something a little more elegant.

The batik zigzag was filled with a vine of leaves and tendrils. After echoing the vine, the middle brown accent was filled with a traveling bars.

Who like Cats?

Most children do.
This cute comfort quilt sat on my frame for a few days. I finally decided to simply cover it with cat voices.

Meow. Miou. Rowr. Purr. Mew.  Lots of words in a few languages.
I threw in a few mice and birds.
And added labels for ten different cats, wild and not so wild.

(Shhh..... all our pets think they are ferocious hunters.)

Radiant Splendor Star - Complete

I could hear the pain in my friend's comment when she thought I'd be spirited away by "otters".
No danger there.
I'm still working out a layout in my head.
It may not be ready for Christmas....

So here's the finished quilt. Once I got rolling, it went quickly......but isn't that always the way. ( It also helps when I get to work on a quilt that is beautifully assembled and perfectly square. )

😊

Radiant Splendor Star - Day 3

This will probably be the last I post about this quilt until it's complete.
All the decisions are made and the rest is just repetition of what I did today for 3 hrs.

Unless I get distracted by something else....( that never happens ) it should take, at the most ..5 more days.
(Getting old...I can only stand on my feet for so many hours.... Sigh)

Radiant Splendor Star - Day 2

Well there is nothing like just diving in. After all the hand stitching was done there was no value in hesitating as I lose focus and all those ideas buzzing in my head, if I walk away for a few days.

I had toyed with the idea of starting in the centre and working out, but to me that's just inviting pinches and wrinkles.
The sketch I made for the borders echoed the wheat theme. Ten of them fit nicely along the top edge.

After a simple arch in the black, I moved onto the first of the diamonds.

I didn't want the whole piece to be about wheat but a foliage/feather was the next choice.

Drawing designs and stitching them are two different things. White paper gives a very different impression than the same design on the fabric.

Drawing all these designs life size allows me to reference what I did before. There have been times when I've reached the far side and couldn't remember how I had finished a corner or how many repeats there were in a section.
Some people use photographs but my camera is not that versatile in giving me a clear idea of what went where. (Hubby says it's just me!)

The drawing for the large negative space just isn't right yet. Maybe stretched and a bit more grass like.
Tomorrow.

Working with Negative Space in a Quilt

A friend brought me quilt top the other day. The pattern is Radiant Splendor Star.
It's a variation of a single block enlarged to a quilt size. This results in there being a lot of open space.

Before deciding how to work this we had a discussion about who the quilt is going to (with the fabric choices in mind) and how she expected it to be used.

The only real pattern is in the main block and the outer border. It appears to be a grass/wheat sheaf.
That seemed like a natural motif to work with.

Today, after drafting the centre pattern with my ancient EQ6, (modelling Customer quilts seems to be about all I use it for anymore), I played around with some of the ideas we had discussed.

I chose the design/layout in the upper left.

Now that's a very large open space, well over the throat of my long arm. I can, but hesitate to markup a customer quilt, even with their permission, particularly now with the nightmare I had with my Collage background. I decided to sketch in the main ribs of the wheat and some cross hatch references using thread. Easily removed when no longer necessary. That's what I accomplished today.

 Quilting this will take some time.....

Snow Days Quilt _ adding the border

While I still really like this quilt I decided it was just too small.

So I spent a long time deciding how I wanted to enlarge it only to come to the realization that I didn't have enough of any of the fabrics. I had worked primarily from fat quarters or single yard pieces, (and shirts).

I went back to my quilt store, Caroline's Quilts in Cambridge and came away with almost the same materials AND some WOOL batting. With the cost of that batting I committed to hand quilting this guy.

With the addition of the three bands, white, grey and brown, the size went from 64 inches square to 86 inches square.
Now it's definitely a bed quilt.
And Now it's on the FRAME. All set for winter mediation. 😌

Snow Days Flimsy Assembled

I've had to make a list.
I was juggling so much in my head that I wasn't being very efficient ( Oh my mother would shake her finger.)

So first on the list was to assemble this quilt top.
I placed a safety pin in every location that needs some additional embroidery, either into the quilt blocks or to link two scenes together.
Now, this is evening hand work, so it will be a few weeks before I consider the quilting.
I was toying with hand quilting this one as I did enjoy working on the "Stickle" quilt, but there are some rather daunting corners with a lot of material so I'll have to think about it for a while.

In the meantime here is the layout.

There were times I was a little leery of my fabric choices but I think the balance worked out. This is sideways so my shadow didn't fall on the top. The rest are shots moving around the quilt CCW.

Snow Days - All the Blocks Complete

Lots of cutting and lots of breaks. The instructions were very clear as long as you remembered they were for one block. It was easy to overlook just how many of each piece or each size you needed, so I organized a system and only messed up once.

The three sizes made for a nice break and encouraged some thoughtful use of the limited materials I had selected. I found it was most efficient and relaxing to cut and assemble each size separately.
The only solid fabric I used was my walnut stained material. I used 3 different shades.

I only have a few small pieces left to embroider. The centre of the quilt is surrounded by the embroidered pieces so I can start assembling that tomorrow.

😉

Snow Days Quilt - Starting the Blocks

The embroidery is almost complete so I started on the blocks yesterday. Unlike most quilt patterns this one is composed of many different blocks in 3 different sizes. You really can't assembly line either the cutting or sewing.
The choice of fabrics was also left open, fat quarters and some yardage in lights, mediums and darks.
I had my choices made, but hubby nixed the blue I had included with the browns and other neutrals. So this is turning out to be a rather subtle quilt.

That's attractive too!

So here's what I have finished as of today.

Finished Quilt - Flowers and Tendrils

It was raining all day, so it was a good day to work on my customer's Quilt,

The majority of the slow work with the custom flowers was completed last week so this was a straight forward job. I did have to redo a small section when the backing didn't lie as flat as I wished, but that's corrected to my satisfaction.

It's a bright quilt. The pattern hides a lot of the work but it shows very well in the darker borders. The pattern in that brown batik was the "go to" for the flower motif in the border and the fill in body of the quilt.

Flying Geese Quilt

Back in Dec. /16 I assembled a quick and easy FG Quilt. And then it sat on my design wall for all this time. It was really inexpensive and it's only 50x70, but I wanted to give it an interesting and unique finish because I liked it. The balance and harmony of the pattern and kit materials were really nice.

But it hung on the wall for 4 months mocking me as I rejected idea after idea. I finally put all the pieces together last night (about 2:00 AM in my night wanderings).
I went back to one of my earlier ideas and finally worked out the "how".

This is a photo of a piece I created in 2011, a copy of the iconic work of Benjamin Chee Chee, one of Canada's unique indigenous artists. Like a lot of marginalized peoples in North America, he died too soon.
I wanted to feature these geese on the quilt. BIG GEESE!
Today I quilted the top. Then I turned to the geese.

Using a projector I enlarged them to 40 in in height.
I'll probably spend a few days finishing these for applique onto the quilt.