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.

This lovely quilt is a variation of the Keyhole quilt pattern and was made by Dorothy. It is a great pattern for Jelly Rolls. Or you could use your leftover strips from other projects for a scrappy look. Grey and yellow always look so elegant together, don’t you agree? Dorothy chose to have her project quilted with the design “Paisley Curls”.

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 rather unusual modern quilt was made by Karen as a decoration for her sewing room. What a great pattern to showcase modern fabrics that you don’t want to cut into small pieces! The turquoise fabrics add a nice splash of colour to the white, black and grey palette. It was quilted with the modern pantograph “Bauhaus” but with fabrics as busy as these the quilting doesn’t really show, so pretty much anything goes.

This Tumbling Blocks quilt is another one of Darlene’s projects. She is a very prolific quilter and likes to make big quilts. I love quilt patterns like this one that create a three-dimensional illusion, and I love Darlene’s colour choices. This pattern requires a lot of mitered seams which can be quite a daunting task but the result is worth the effort for sure. What a stunning quilt!

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.

Click to purchase Stepping Stones Pattern (English/Imperial)

Jean chose the classic “Attic Window” setting to showcase this beautiful outer space fabric and turn it into a quilt for her grandson. Right now is a great time to be watching the night sky. Did you catch a glimpse of comet NEOWISE? We spent two evenings out watching it, and in addition we saw Jupiter and Saturn rise and also a couple of shooting stars. Speaking of shooting stars, the Perseid meteor shower is just a few days past its peak and should still be visible this weekend. But back to Jean’s quilt… we chose a pantograph with the fitting name “Starry Night”. I just did a tiny edit. In the original design the moon has a face contour, with a nose and open mouth which looks cute on a baby quilt but wasn’t really suitable for Jean’s project, so I changed this part into a curve and turned it into a simple crescent moon.

This quilt was made by Diane using leftover fabrics. She alternated two different blocks, creating a secondary design of diagonal chains running across the quilt. The pantograph she chose is called “Diagonal Plaid Bias Cut”.

Sharon collected rose fabrics for a while and used them for this lovely quilt in red, pink and green. The swirly rose pantograph called “Rose Garden” was the perfect choice for her project.

One of our guild members, Cynthia, cut up all her scraps into 2″ squares. She then decided that she didn’t feel like sewing all those tiny squares together again and donated them to the guild. The We Care committee divided them and packed them into bags, and anyone who wanted to could take a bag home and turn the squares into a scrappy quilt. Gail accepted the “Cynthia Challenge”, and this “Scrappy Chains” quilt is the result. The pantograph is “Diagonal Plaid Bias Cut”. I thought it picked up the on-point squares of the chains very well and filled all that negative space nicely.