January's Escape

Somehow, it is already February. My last post was in December. It's feels like its been ages since December. Life has not been kind. My trouble-maker kid managed to get himself suspended the week just before Christmas break and then again as soon as school started in January. I thought I was going to bang my head on a brick wall. Oh wait, I think I did. You think oh, it's no big deal having a teen home when you work from home, but trust me...not nearly enough work got done! Lucky for me (if you want to call it lucky), I had my next show quilt just loaded on the longarm when the sh&t hit the fan, so it was only my quilt that took forever and had to suffer the delays of life. After 2 weeks of working on it, it's off and we are trying to settle back in to a schedule that is "normal".

The first 3 quilts shown all came to me from the same client. They were on the machine about 2 weeks, so you can imagine I was ready to get them off and get paid! I love doing multiple client quilts but more often several are sent at once, but completed over the course of several months. Not this case. This is a Kim McLean Flower Garden (or something like that - honestly, they all look the same to me anyway). It has LOTS of turned edge applique. 

 The quilt is double batted and stitched with mostly Superior's Magnaquilter (100wt ) thread. It is very fine and sinks into the background nicely. It allows you to backtrack several times without it showing.

 The appliques on this quilt are huge - way too big to leave as is. So...most all of them needed finish quilting on top of them. I think I used 10 different colors of 40wt thread to do this.

 The border is a bit fun with these meandering feathers that wind around the circles. It actually is a mostly continuous motif.

 Quilt Number 2 was a fun edge to edge. Boy, do I like E2Es sometimes. I don't get that many of them but many quilts really are lousy candidates for custom quilting. This one is a classic perfect quilt for an E2E.

Last quilt is another Dream Big flower panel. I have done lots of these in the last 12-18 months, but this is my first in the green colorway! It is double-batted and stitched in 4 colors of Glide-like thread (shiny 40wt). Its a good top to play with fun feather and fill patterns from my books.

 Just look at that awesome texture!

 Here's my first February finish. It will be heading home to NJ tomorrow. I think you will be able to see it at the Vermont Quilt show in June. It is also double-batted, a common trend amongst show quilters or custom quilts.

 Her applique is fused using Sue Nichols' method, and then blanket stitched around very cleanly. Because the centers of the appliques are cut free of the fusible, they tend to poof better than if not cutaway. Unfortunately I still encountered needle gumming issues with the fusible so I limited the quilting on the appliques to only SID. It still looks really nice.

The center combines some graceful and symmetrical feathers with a little crosshatching and lots of pebbles. This is done in a gold 40wt thread. All of the quilting is in this same thread.

 I created a circular set of frames around the outer blocks to create a secondary pattern. There really is not much extra space on this quilt for doing much. The applique is really the star.

Sometimes the morning light comes in just so to illuminate the quilt beautifully.