Friday, February 07, 2014

Variety of lap quilts

I have a box of three lap-sized quilts heading home to Tennessee today.  This client is something of a purveyor of the eclectic, so there is a little of every genre here.  She has a knack for finding older pieces. This is the second of such quilts I have quilted for her, that is of an unknown, but most certainly older age.  It's most likely 1940's or 50's I think, but I am no expert.  It's not in the greatest of shape, with many very thin fabrics, burn or stain marks, and piecing that was definitely done before more exacting methods and rotary cutting were around.  None the less, these quilts need preserving and loving too.
 Like with her other vintage top, a muslin liner was added beneath the top to help even out the weight of the fabrics.  It makes it so the batting doesn't show right through the very thin ones.  She chose this modernized Baptist Fan pattern for the quilt.
Julie's second quilt was actually purchased from Wanda at Exuberant Color.  It is a scrappy, string-pieced quilt.  The black and white blocks give it a pop of design and color.  Wanda uses many Westminster and Kaffe fabrics.
We decided on free-quilted (ie, no rulers) wiggly lines in the strips, which all vary in width a little bit.  I put a cross-hatch in the black and white dot to set it off.
 This last quilt is my favorite of this set.  It is probably the nice bright jewel tones that send it home for me.
Or perhaps this most unusual tan print she used...I wish you could see how neat this is.  It has old-fashioned printings of postcards, and alphabets, and dress patterns.  I knew that it needed more than a pantograph to bring it to life.  She agreed to a lite-custom so I put split feathers in all of the tan blocks, and a more graphic quilting on the colored triangles.
 I used a pink-purple variegated Aurifil thread on the colors since it coordinated best with the border.  It shows just a little on the yellow and greens.  Here's a look at how I did these...
 With chalk, I marked up the 8" triangles like shown.  Then I free-quilted parallel lines to fill alternate triangles.  I didn't want the rigid structure of actually stitching these dividing lines or what comes from using rulers.  This is more modern, and really is only for the design aesthetic.  Hope that makes sense.

Have a fun Friday...time for me to get to work.


5 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for sharing photos of your quilting on these quilts that are just lovely. Very nice work!

Quiltdivajulie said...

Oh my goodness! I cannot wait for the box to arrive next week -- there will be a crowd of co-workers jostling to see the magic you've created! THANK YOU - all three look wonderful!!!

And I love how you described me as "a purveyor of the eclectic" - it's perfect and oh, so true.

Darling Millie said...

Beautiful quilting!

Michele said...

They all look great and I love that you were able to preserve that vintage one.

Tami @ Lemon Tree Tales said...

Wow, I really like that version of the Baptist Fan. It looks like it'd also work really well on modern quilts as well as the more traditional ones. And it's always fun to see one of Wanda's colorful creations go to a good home. :-)