I was surprised and very pleased to find out that my quilt “Bailey’s Boat Yard” has been chosen to be featured by The Quilt Show’s Dailey Blog on September 24th!
Anyone can visit the blog here and spend some time (hmmm – that may be a lot of time!) perusing not only my quilt but all the quilts and features offered by The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson & Ricky Tims. Enjoy!
Original post here.
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!
I’m excited to share that I have started to carry templates and specialty rulers for long arm machine quilters! I have been doing more and more ruler
Nested Hearts
work and finally found a supplier for the templates. They are 1/4″ thick clear acrylic and while I only have a few instock at the moment I will be bringing in more soon. One product I have heard good reviews for is the Crosshatch tool by Westalee Designs out of Australia. I have a project coming up that I will be using it on and I will be sure to add my own opinion on the ease of use when I do. I have done cross-hatching before by marking each line and this system eliminates the need for marking and you can stand in front of your machine making this very popular quilting design much, much easier to quilt. Check out my shop for more info.
Lapel Stick for quilters
I’ve also brought in a new product called Lapel Stick. It is a non-staining temporary fabric adhesive that washes completely out and can be used on almost any fabric: cotton, silk, leather, linen, blends and wool. While they market it for household use for tacking hems or collars in place it is fantastic for quilters and fabric artists. Anywhere you need to temporarily bond fabric together – applique, binding or the stubborn seams that just will not line up – this is the product. It comes in sets of 3 for $15 so you can have one in your quilting room, the kitchen and your purse!
And now for my specials.
Good luck 🙂
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!
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
ThreadTails 