Last weekend was a long weekend, with Monday being Thanksgiving in Canada, and I managed to sneak my Penguin Promenade top into the quilting queue. I didn’t really know how I wanted to quilt it, just had a vague idea of maybe some snowflakes. I should know better by now, I never just do “some” snowflakes… of course it took much longer than expected but I am really happy with the result. Here is a little sneak peek of my quilted penguins. Happy Friday, everyone, and have a good weekend!
Now this was a really fun quilt to quilt. Sharon made it as a decoration for her sewing room wall, and it has everything from traditional pieced blocks to appliqué, from hand embroidery with crayon tinting to button embellishments. She asked for custom quilting to enhance the different parts of the quilt, and I think you can tell how much fun I had with it.
“Where We Love Is Home” is a pattern by Australian designer Anni Downs of Hatched and Patched. Cynthia put a lot of work into this quilt, she did all the appliqué and embroidery by hand, and there are lots of tiny pieces. This is truly a labour of love, and Cynthia did an awesome job putting it all together.
Lynnette found herself with extra time on her hands because of the pandemic and decided to give quilting a try. She made this cute baby elephant quilt in bright colours as a gift for a baby in the family. I kept the quilting simple, it gets lost in the busy fabrics anyway, and free-motion stitched flowers and loops around the appliqué. Lynnette did a fabulous job, I hope we will get to see more of her work in the future.
Isn’t this the cutest little bunny quilt that Brenda made? The finished quilt will have embroidered bunny faces and buttons sewn on for eyes and also the flower centres. Since embellishments can only put on after quilting, you will have to imagine these details. I love how some of the appliqué extends into the outer border. The quilting doesn’t show very much on the darker fabrics, I mostly tried to add some texture, and I even free-motioned some carrots in the background. It was a really fun project to work on.
This is Darlene’s version of Jacqueline De Jonge’s “Happiness” quilt. I have quilted another one before that was done in more muted colours and can be found here. Jacqueline’s company name is “BeColourful”, and her striking designs are just that, colourful. I love bright colours and enjoyed custom quilting Darlene’s project. I am still not tempted to make anything myself that involves a lot of paper piecing but quilting these is really fun.
Hannah machine-embroidered the honeybee blocks in this striking quilt. I love the hexagon honeycomb look of the blocks. She asked me not to quilt over the embroidery, so I only outlined the blocks by stitching in the ditch and added a design to the background. The sashing features bees busily buzzing from cornerstone to cornerstone. This was also Hannah’s suggestion, and I love how it turned out. The outer border picks up the flower design of the sashing print. Quite an unusual quilt, and lots of fun to quilt.
It feels like forever since I published the last pattern that was not a BOM block. And there is a good reason for that, I have been extremely busy with quilting this year. It feels like the past four months or so have been one continuous Christmas rush. So if you are planning to get a quilt longarmed by me this year to give away for Christmas, please get your name in the queue right now. I am currently booking for mid-October, and there is only a limited number of slots available before Christmas.
But back to the Stepping Stones pattern: I quilted my sample back in February, and I managed to bind it and even put the label on in March/April when the Covid restrictions had just started and everybody was still hoping it would disappear quickly. And then people realized it was going to be around for a while and they had nothing much to do, and more and more quilt tops started showing up on my doorstep. But I finally finished writing the pattern, and I am very happy with the way my sample turned out. It is based on the scrap quilts I made as samples when I first started my longarm business. I made three small quilts, the tops all the same, but quilted them in three different ways, one with a meander, one with an edge to edge pantograph and one with different custom designs. I honestly didn’t give much thought to the design back then, just threw together whatever I found in my scrap drawers but people have been asking about a pattern for the quilt, and I promised I would eventually write one. The original quilts were pretty small, so I made a bigger version, and I had a lot of fun quilting it. The block design is part of a panto set called “Signed, Sealed, Delivered”, and on the outer border I wanted to try a curved crosshatch that turned out really nice.
The pattern is available for purchase in the store section. It does not include strip piecing instructions. All blocks were made individually from scraps. The pattern will be available with a discount until August 25, 2020. Enter the code STONES during checkout for 20% off.
Die Anleitung für den Stepping Stones Quilt ist auf deutsch nicht verfügbar.
Lisa loves English Paper Piecing and made this fabulous quilt called “Emma Mary”, pattern by Judy Newman. There is a bit of custom quilting in the centre medallion to enhance all those lovely hexies. For the pieced blocks around the centre we decided that they were busy enough and detailed quilting would only get lost, so I used a pantograph in this area. The design is called ” Paisley Curls”.
Cynthia enjoys needlework by hand and pieced and appliquéd this lovely quilt called “Rosa Biddlecombe”, designed by Margaret Mew. The variety of fabrics used for the blocks makes the quilting almost disappear, and we decided on an allover design called “Wild Wind” for this part of the quilt. The centre part is lightly custom quilted, the way Cynthia likes it, with just one echo around the appliqué and a few free-motion feathers in the background.
