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.

Sonja made this pretty quilt using batiks and donated it to a silent auction. “Ground Cover” is actually the name of the pantograph that I used for this quilt, one of my favourite leaf patterns. The warm earth colours of the quilt remind me of a walk in the woods on a sunny autumn day.

“Cat-I-Tude” is the name of the fabric line by Ann Lauer for Benartex that Sherri used to make this quilt. (There is also a similar line for dog lovers called “Dog On It”). The cat blocks are a panel, Sherri cut them apart and put them into a chain setting with star blocks. Isn’t it great how the black background makes the colours pop? It was quilted with paw prints, the name of the pantograph is “Puppy Paws” but they sure look like “Kitty Paws” to me 😉

Lyn made this quilt using Tula Pink’s “Modern Blocks” and the Skyline Layout. She wanted to leave the sashing between the block rows unquilted, and I stitched in the ditch along the seams to secure them in place. I put the quilt sideways on the frame and then used the “Champagne Bubbles” panto to fill the rows. To me it looks like gases bubbling up in test tubes, but that might be my pharmacy background speaking.

Lyn made this cute quilt for her granddaughter, using a pattern by Elizabeth Hartman. She asked for custom quilting, and with all this negative space to fill it was a longarm quilter’s dream! I quilted it using a technique I learned from Angela Walters. She recommends picking four or five different background filler designs and then just start quilting them, alternating them as needed, quilting whichever one you feel like at the moment. This creates interesting texture and keeps me from overthinking. I usually pick pebbles as one of my designs because they make it easy to fill smaller spaces and allow me to travel wherever I need to go. I think you can tell how much fun I had with this project!

If this quilt looks familiar to you and you are wondering if I posted these pictures before, you are not entirely mistaken. Last year I posted pictures of Cynthia’s version, and a few months later, her friend Lisa had her version of the top ready to quilt. Both ladies love stitching by hand, and they often choose the same patterns and work on them together. For quilting, I went with the basic plan I used for the first version but changed a few things for Lisa’s quilt. A huge amount of work went into this quilt, and I feel honoured that both ladies asked me to quilt their masterpieces.

I am sure you all sometimes wonder where all those scraps are coming from that keep piling up in our drawers, bins and boxes. In an attempt to conquer hers, Patricia took her bright batik leftovers and created this stunning quilt. The black background fabric was the perfect choice, don’t you love how it makes the colours pop? Inspired by the leaf and vine designs of many of the batik fabrics I quilted it with a “Tropical Leaves” panto.

Donna used a panel to make this elephant quilt as a gift. The colours and the elephants made me think of Africa and the setting sun, and we chose a pantograph called “Sun Scallops” for her quilt. Isn’t it just perfect? I love how the curved echo around the spikes creates the illusion of clouds, a very clever design.

This gorgeous quilt called “Blooms” is a design by Jason Yenter of In The Beginning and was made by Debra. These are the original fabrics for the quilt, and I thought at first they were batiks but they turned out to be digital prints. Debra asked for custom quilting. While the white background seemed to ask for swirls and pebbles, any ambitious quilting would have been lost in the colourful strippy parts, and we went with a Tropical Leaves panto for these areas instead. This is such a beautiful quilt, and I am quite happy with the way it turned out.

And here we have another Rail Fence quilt, made by a different Mary. Sometimes it is funny how these end up in my queue next to each other. This one was made from cozy flannels and is a gift for Mary’s grandson. The pantograph is called “Overlapping Crop Circles”, and I love how it creates movement across the quilt.