Quilt Catchup

It is not that I have not been sufficiently busy. I have become poor at posting to my blog since the advent of facebook. That app has become the time-suck of life!

This post is a wrap-up of some quilts I have done in the last couple months (not counting work I have done on at least 3 of my own quilts).

This first one was brought to me by a local woman. She'd made this for her son and daughter-in-law for their wedding. As her story goes, her son had a stuffed elephant as a child and the DIL had a stuffed worm. The quilt was supposed to depict both of them, in her own original way. She initially had another quilter longarm quilt it (first photo). She was very dissatisfied with the quilting because some of it was very open and didn't fit the piecing. Other areas of the quilting were poorly thought out, having wide open stippling instead of something a bit more visually interesting. Scales of quilting from section to section were not at all similar. 

 (original quilting by previous quilter)

The owner ripped out a lot of the original quilting before I got the quilt. My job was to make the elephant more interesting, replacing decorative quilting where wide open stippling had been. I also ditch stitched all applique seams to make it lay better.

 The other thing she had me do was add something into the background to fill it in more. I never would have chosen what the previous quilter did. It was computerized and did not fit the piecing at all. This type of piecing has so many options for easy continuous quilting with way more interest, but since I didn't want to rip out what was there, all I could do was add to it, as continuously as possible. It sits beside that fairly dense stipple, so leaving as is was not happening.

 I don't really love what I added, but it fills it in better, and the hearts keep with the "wedding quilt" theme. Regardless of what I think (and it probably stems from the fact that it does not fit the piecing), the owner was happy.

 The elephant was fun. The tusks previously had no quilting, so the addition of echo lines made them pop. The elephant's legs had a stipple, so I made quilting in this area better match the ears (which had a variety of fills). There was not a lot of rhyme or reason to the previous stitching, but at least now he is cute and more cohesive.

 The little worm got detailed too, right down to her cheeks.

In a perfect world, the client would have removed all quilting and let me start over, but that seemed unreasonable to ask. I also would have used a wool batting not this ultra-thin cotton which is flat and does nothing for the applique. In the end, she was much happier with the wedding quilt, and that is what matters.

Next up...one of the few edge-to-edge quilts that I did. Admittedly, I quilt predominantly custom quilting, but 10-15% of the jobs I get are really best suited to an edge-to-edge, like this one.

Next up is this very cute baby quilt made by a long time and great applique quilter. It's a baby quilt for somebody.  Who can predict what animals will be all the rage?...Earlier this year and last year I quilted several elephant quilts. Now, llamas are in.

 The trick with them is to give them semi-cute features - like eye-lashes. I also tried to give the fur some swirls for character.

Much of the background is quilted in a swirly feather freehand. It is a front-side edge. This particular pattern is one of many that "starts with a swirl" that are in my Dense & Dainty book. They can be stitched much smaller for a dense background fill. They also scale up for a nice edge-to-edge.

  And of course the backing is a super-soft llama flannel too!

This quilt was done last month after I returned from MQX Midwest. It is a large Neimeyer design. Earlier this year I quilted a Bali star, which is similar. It has the rings and no applique, but it also has the additional star points with the rings. I like this better. It is simpler and more true to a traditional wedding ring quilt.

The pattern actually only has 2 open corners, so these fan and feather motifs were very pretty there. To balance the curved crosshatching on the corners, I opted for putting CCH in the center of the quilt too. This is a location where I have done differently in the past, but I really love how it settles the quilt and brings a very-traditional look to it.

 I then put the feathers in the smaller melon shapes. The ring of framing and pebbles takes forever because of the stopping, knotting and burying but it is a lovely frame.

 This quilt is double batted with 80/20 and QW wool. That helps to bring out the texture.

 There are 3 colored threads used between the 4-patch centers and the continuous curve on the rings. I needed to choose threads that would not disappear on any of the materials.

 Because solid backings are lovely, here are a couple pics of this quilt's backside...

 Really pretty!

This last quilt was going to be a custom, then it was going to be an edge to edge. I even ordered a new pantograph to use on it. Fast forward through a few issues, and the client and I settled on a modified hybrid of edge-to-edge and custom. The clamshells are really a custom treatment because they are fairly time-consuming, but they are quilted in an edge-to-edge fashion. It does a great job of melding the 100 very different blocks.

 Here's the backing...It is a sateen I have never seen.

 And lastly...here is a quilt I quilted in the spring for a CA client. You might remember it because it took forever, or because I wrote a blogpost about how I dealt with the fact that the borders had WAY too much fabric in them -- a problem I deal with far too often. Anyway, the finished quilt is amazing, and my client entered it at PIQF, a very competitive quilt competition in CA. Her quilt won an honorable mention out of nearly 50 entries!

Time for me to get to work trying to finish the binding on my next show quilt. I'm about ready to throw try #3 into the fire and leave it without a binding at all!