Feathered Star Quilt

I must say that I think that this quilt is one of the prettiest I’ve done.  My customer chose a scrappy 1930′s repro’ look in soft and medium pastels.  While not all of the fabrics are 1930 reprints they all blend together beautifully.  Here is a picture of the flimsy.

Feathered Star

I do not have the name of this particular quilt layout and if anyone does know please leave me a comment or note about it and I will give credit where credit is due.  Thanks to Karen S. for letting me know about the quilt and the link for you!

My customer left me with a photocopy of the magazine layout showing ‘some’ (some) of the quilting and asked that I do it as much like the picture as I could.

Feathered Star

While some of it could be made out a great deal could not so the finished quilt is a mixture of the quilting that had been suggested and my own.

I first started out by taking the flimsy picture and a few more close-ups of the centre, stars, corners, borders and so on.  I printed them out in black and white and used them to draw my quilting ideas on. I use this method a great deal when I’m deciding on quilting designs.  I find that I can see immediately whether or not my ideas will work.  I chose Superior’s So Fine #403 Putty and it blended in perfectly with all the colours so I didn’t have to change out my thread at all.  To make the arch for the feathered triangles in the centre I used the oval template so they would be consistent throughout.  I also used the end of the oval to make the outer border design.

Some areas looked to have very basic teardrop feather shapes but I decided to do a more formal feather instead but still keep the simple look over all.

Here are a few close-ups

Feathered Star Centre

Feathered Star 8pt star

Feathered Star corner 1

Feathered Star corner 2

Feathered Star fan border

I could paint my spare bedroom again in a soft buttery yellow … I wonder if she’ll let me have this quilt!

Kaleidoscope Stack & Whack Quilt #5

At least I think it is number five.  This customer is a beginner quilter and although there are a few pressing techniques I want to go over with her on the quilt I think the colour choices she made were bang on!  This is a very pretty quilt and suits her to a ‘T’.  A rose and mint green floral fabric was used for the kaleidoscopes and one border and she picked a lovely soft mint green blender for the sashing and accent borders.  The contrast fabric for background and outer border are a beautiful mottled  deep rose.  I know the pictures don’t show the colours right.

Kaleidescope Stack n Wack Quilt

She will be keeping this quilt so we wanted to do something a little special.  She wanted feathers so after outlining all the sashing, borders and stars I did a mini fantasy feather around the stars for background fill.  First time I’ve made this technique this small and I really like it.

Fantasy Feather background fill

On the other quilts like this I’ve ‘stitched in the ditch’ for the 9-patch corner stones but this time I only outlined them.  I used the high-loft Dream Puff Poly and they look like little 9-patch pillows!

The first rose border I did a meandering rose bud and leaf vine.  The first mint border is left so it puffs up like the mint sashing.  The quilting wouldn’t really show clearly in the rose border so I did a simple leaf meander.

Now, the outer border caused a little bit of a problem as I hadn’t made a note of the fact that the side strips are wider than the top and bottom strips.  I had a vague memory of talking about it with her but couldn’t remember whether she was going to even them up after or just what.  So a phone call was in order – hate to do that because I think I sound scatter-brained (I may be but no sense in letting my customers know it too!) Sure enough the C curl feather border I had planned and started to chalk wouldn’t work because there would be no trimming as she needed the different sized strips so it would fit her bed.  Back to the drawing board.

different sized outer border

The side strip was 7.5″ and the top and bottom strips were only 5.5″.  I had it locked in my head the C curl feather and it took a few hours of trying different ideas and chalking it out before I had to accept that I had to do an overall design in here or the scale of the quilting would end up smaller on the top and the bottom.  I through feathers and leaves and rose-buds all together into a ‘doodle’ type of meandering and while the C curl feather border would have formalized the quilt this pattern looks good too.

feather, rosebud, leaf doodle meander

The outer mint border was done with a simple C curl.

I’ve included a picture of the back because, as usual, the quilting shows up much better LOL

back of quilt

I used So Fine! thread on the top that matched perfectly and let the quilting show instead of the thread.  Of course – the Bottom Line in the bobbin as always!

Another Kaleidoscope Quilt

Just a few quick pictures of the latest customer quilt.  This must be my fourth or fifth kaleidoscope quilt so far.  When the local quilt shop has a class I know that I will be seeing a few of the finished tops!

This one is done a deep rose pink with mint green sashing.

Kaleidoscope Quilt

I outlined all the mint green sashing with MonoPoly clear thread including the little 9-patch in the sashing and the stars.  This monofilament thread from Superior Threads is soft and a dream to work with on the long-arm and my Janome.  A topstitch needle and a bit looser tension is all that is needed.

kaleidoscope close-up

A large meander around the stars, a little continuous curve in the stars and some fantasy feathers using King Tut #952 Wild Rose in the border completed this quilt.

OK – now only 14 more tops to go!

border close-up

Mosaic Magic Quilt part II

For anyone not following the blog, here is a picture of the top I’m quilting for my customer.  This is the original from quiltwoman.com …

Mosaic Magic

and here is my customers done in beige and white with one of the five layouts given for this block.

Mosaic Magic loaded

She chose ‘Fantasy Feathers’; a very casual loose type of edge to edge quilting .  Here are a couple close-ups of the quilting design.  Wool batting is being used and you can really see the higher loft that is achieved.

Fantasy Feather quilting design; high loft

Fantasy Feather close-up

All done!

Ready for customer pick-up

I really like how it turned out.  More importantly, so did my customer when she picked it up!

Mosaic Magic with Fantasy Feather quilt design

Guild Challenges

Most Guilds have a challenge (or two) that they offer to the members to participate or not.  In my Guild, Timberlane Quilters Guild, we are given a challenge at our first meeting in September and have the entire Guild year to work on it.  Our last meeting is in June of the following year and at that time we show off our creativity, skills and hard work.

This challenge was a simple paint chip challenge.  In September we were given a paper bag with a paint chip card and we were to use at least one of the colours on the card in our quilt.  A pretty simple challenge but the creativity it inspired in those that participated was unbelievable.  We had our year end party last night so I don’t have the pictures yet but as soon as I do I will post them here or at least the link to the Guild’s site so I can share with you.

Paint Chip Challenge

I can share mine though.  When I opened my paper bag last year the paint chip I received was of the ‘denim’ sort of blues.  That was when I realized that the challenge wasn’t necessarily in the colour we got but in what to do with it!  I spent a couple months just thinking about it and decided to make something playing off the word ‘blue’.  Hmm – blue suede shoes, blue lagoon; nothing.  Feeling blue… feeling a little blue…that was something I could work with.  Now, what to make.

I liked the idea of “feeling a little blue” and could picture something with just a small spot of blue in it.  To feel it I’d have to have a hand in it so to speak .  I looked around online to see if I could find a paper pieced block of a hand but decided that I would rather it look more realistic.  I enjoy doing trapunto, not that I’ve done a great deal, but I figured that was the only way I could make something that looked real.  I took a quick picture of my hand with my finger out as if I was touching something and printed it out a little bigger than life-size, one in colour and one in greyscale.

I traced the outline on some white cotton and used my Derwent Inktense water soluble pencil crayons to colour it in.  If you’ve never tried them they are a blast to play with.  You can use them as is or with water or a fabric medium and the colours are beautiful.

Painted and stitched hand

Once the colouring was done I pinned a small piece of  Dream Puff batting underneath and stitched around the hand with Vanish Extra.  After trimming away the extra batting I used another scrap for the batting and some leftover muslin I had for the backing.  So far this challenge had cost me nothing

background fill

I decided to use the background for practicing background fills.  Because it was background fill I used So Fine! thread; any of the thicker threads would have been too heavy and just taken over the piece.

I did this on my Janome MC10000 and not the longarm.  Seeing as I teach machine quilting on domestic sewing machines at the local QS I need to keep in practice!  All in all it was a lot of fun.  I wasn’t sure how to finish off the wrist area so I went down to the thrift shop and picked up a blue corduroy shirt for $3 which became the total cost, besides my time, for the project.

more background fill

and more background fill

I'm Just Feeling a Little Blue