Sewing & Quilt Gallery

 I did three quilts recently for a new client.  They are all really pretty, different quilts.  I'll show you two of them today.  They'll be on their way back to her early next week.

This first one is small, something like 30x40 or so.  The fabrics are SO gorgeous.  Almost every one of the fabrics has a sheen or metallic flecking.  It almost reminded me of an Asian look.  She asked for an E2E, and since the piecing (see next pic) is practically miniscule, it seemed like a good idea.  When the quilt arrived and I saw the fabrics, I knew it needed just a little bit more.  I used a gold glide thread, which is perfect for the fabrics.  It has a lovely sheen.  Then I chose to feather the ivory narrow border to give the quilt a little personality.  The rest of the quilt was filled with an E2E.

Not sure that the fabrics are visible even here, but maybe she'll tell me what they are and I can add that to this.

The second quilt is a variation on a Dresden plate.  She's turned them into sunflowers, and a fall wall-hanging.  The fabrics on this were all extremely busy.  I had a bit of difficulty selecting quilting motifs that worked with the prints.  As a result, I ended up picking out a couple of things that just weren't effective.

She told me that the pattern is from an Edyta Sitar (I know I probably butchered the spelling) book.  The inner part of the sunflowers are "flappy".  There must be a fabric folding technique used here.  Because I stitched petals on the gold part of the sunflower, the flappy part stands out nicely.  The backfill has a dense yet simple leaf filler.  She'd asked for leaves on the quilt, but with all the print, much of which was leafy, it was not really feasible to do, and have it show.

Again, I used a gold Glide thread.  It runs well, looks like fall, and shows up on the heavy print.  The quilting has a bit of straight cross-hatching, and then some feathered swags and bead-board on the outer border.  I was able to get the leaf motif in on the narrow border, which was mostly solid in appearance.

 Here's the popping sunflowers...

I have one more to show another day.  It's time now to reorder some thread and get ready for the kids.  I've just spent 3 days with my big green Dresden on the frame, trying to knock off the details that were bugging me when I stopped working on it 3 weeks ago.  It now has all borders done (except for one that still needs 1/4 of it ripped out).  I'm in the process of securing the pesky piping so it all lays smoothly.  I expect it will be off in 3-4 days, will undergo a little more pickout, and then go back on the frame (sigh...another hour wasted) to be wrapped up.  Now, how on earth do I block something this large???