This is another quilt made by Ruth using a traditional pattern, this time “Trip Around The World”. One of her fabrics had small ivy leaves which made the design “Ground Cover” an easy choice for quilting.
Ruth made this pretty Log Cabin quilt, and when she dropped it off she told me in no uncertain terms that she did not like it at all. I couldn’t see what was wrong with it as it turned out very nice in my opinion. Ruth told me that this quilt was going to be a wedding gift, and someone else had chosen and bought the fabrics, and I began to see the problem. If I don’t love the material, I don’t love working on the project. A long time ago I made a store sample that was all brown and dark blue, and it is no secret that I love bright, bold colours. Making that dark quilt felt like a chore, so I knew where Ruth was coming from. We chose “Starburst” as a quilting pattern in a large size, Ruth wanted just light quilting, and I think it turned out quite lovely, and I hope the recipient will agree and enjoy Ruth’s gift.
There are lots of Japanese logic puzzles out there, Sudoku is probably the best known among them, and you can use the idea behind Sudoku to create a quilt layout. This Sudoku quilt was made by Barbara and showcases pretty batik fabrics. And for my fellow OCD peeps, yes, I checked too, and Barbara’s layout is not a true Sudoku but it is still a pretty quilt. And since the fabric is definitely the star of the project, we went with a simple pantograph and chose “Taj Mahal” for nice texture that stays in the background.
This cute little quilt was made by Terri for her grandbaby. Her daughter selected the fabrics and chose the ruffles that are incorporated in every block. These ruffles made it impossible to do an allover pantograph pattern, the foot of the machine would get caught and possibly flip them over and stitch them down. So we decided that I would just free-motion around the ruffles, and I filled the block section with loops and daisies and added a separate daisy design to the border where the almost solid yellow border fabric makes the quilting much more visible.
This quilt was made by Joan as a gift for her grandson. I love patterns like this one where you put fairly simple blocks together, and with clever placement a secondary pattern emerges. The quilting design Joan chose is called “Taj Mahal”, a simple modern pattern that adds great texture.
Donna made this pretty quilt in spring colours from a panel. The stained glass prints are already busy enough, so we chose the design “Taj Mahal” for quilting, a simple pattern that adds nice texture.
Another finished Block of the Month top from the Chilliwack Quilters Guild found its way to me, this one was made by Janet. Members were free to choose their colours which makes Janet’s quilt very different from Ellen’s. In fact, without knowing these two were part of the same group project I probably wouldn’t even have noticed. Janet has a pretty floral feature fabric, and we went with “Ginger Flower” as the quilting pattern.
This lovely quilt in blue and white was made by Janet. After stitching all the Dresden Plates by hand, she chose an unusual block for the outer borders. I am not sure if it has a name but I like the chain look it creates. The pantograph I used for this quilt is called “Paisley Curls”.
This is Mary’s version of the popular “Labyrinth Walk” quilt. I have quilted some before, and Mary looked at the pictures and liked the “Overlapping Crop Circles” as a quilting pattern for her project. It is my favourite for the Labyrinth quilt, all the corners and angles and straight lines need a curved design that brings some motion and texture, and the Crop Circles are perfect for that.
I finished another scrappy donation quilt this month, using my favourite scrap pattern. I often custom quilt donation quilts as well, they are great practice objects but I didn’t have time to play around, so I used a pantograph instead that I have wanted to try for quite a while. It is called “Chiffon” and I have used it in a smaller version as a background filler but never in the default edge-to-edge size. That’s another really neat thing about scrap quilts, almost any quilting design will work. This one has already been donated to the guild, and I have started making another donation quilt, a great way to use up leftovers and do something useful.
Edit: Every time I post a picture of one of these, people start asking for the pattern in the comments. There isn’t a pattern that you can purchase. This is something that one of my German friends came up with years ago. I’ll try to explain, maybe you can figure it out by just looking at the pictures. You alternate light and dark fabrics and always press the seams away from the light pieces. I put it together in rows, I find that easier than looking for blocks. The big squares are 4″ squares (including seam allowance, so 3 1/2″ finished size). The small squares are 2″ squares, the rectangles are 2″ x 4″. This means you can just start with 4″ squares and cut them into the smaller pieces (halves and quarters) as needed, without having to worry about seam allowances. They will fit together. You can actually do this with any size squares… if you start out with 5″ squares and cut them in half or quarters, you can put it all together without having to worry about the math.
This might sound a bit confusing but just take a few 4″ squares in light and dark values and give it a try. It’s super easy, and you can make the quilt as big or small as you want to.
