Patchwork

Personal Projects

Fruit Salad

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More than a year ago my friend Doris gave me a box of berry fabrics, saying she had made several quilts using these fabrics and was tired of them now. She thought maybe I would have a use for them. Well, it was a box of free fabric… what was I supposed to do, right? I took it home, and when I opened it I saw that there were even a few blocks inside. I don’t remember how many, maybe six or seven. I decided to make more blocks and turn this into a donation quilt for our guild. I didn’t have a plan, and that is not the way I usually work. I need a plan and a backup plan and possibly even a backup backup plan. Just making blocks not knowing where I was going was hard work for me, and that’s why it took so long to finish this quilt. That and a lack of time, of course.


I finished the top before Christmas and managed to quilt it over the holidays. Although I usually like to custom quilt all my own projects, I decided to use a pantograph this time and picked “Strawberry Fields”. I figured I might as well add more berries to the mix. And the quilt is so busy that any custom quilting would have been lost anyway. Then other things took priority, and I finally managed to put on the binding this week, yay. Now I just have to sew on the label, and it will be ready to be donated at the March meeting.

 

Longarm

Autumn Woods

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Jean made this quilt in autumn colours from a batik jelly roll. We thought that a pattern with leaves would be a good quilting design for her project, and going with the fall theme, she chose “Acorns and Oak Leaves”.

Autumn Woods


Sneak Peek

What I Am Working On: Happy Hippo Hop

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I had to drop everything else and make time for this cute project, a quilt I need as a baby shower gift. Baby showers are like Christmas, they sneak up on you, and suddenly they are looming just around the corner, and you haven’t finished your project yet. I miscalculated because of a cultural difference. Baby showers are not a thing in Germany, and no one would ever think of giving a gift before the baby was actually born. I always had late March in my head as the due date, and when I received the invitation to the baby shower for next week, a whole month was suddenly taken out of my mental timeline, and that is an eternity in quilting. Anyway, I got my act together, I had the design and fabrics ready, and I spent the holiday weekend making the quilt top and quilting it. Here is a little preview, this little guy makes me laugh every time I see him. The quilt is done and just needs the binding, but I still have one more weekend before the shower, so it should be finished right on time. There will be a pattern for this but I haven’t even started writing it yet. I also have to make a sample quilt that won’t be given away. I had planned on making the blocks all at the same time but of course that plan went out the window as well.

Longarm

Rectangular Nine Patch

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This fun scrappy project was pieced by Gail. What a neat idea to just make the nine patch blocks rectangular – simple but very effective. I also like how the black/grey strips between the blocks go from dark to light. We wondered if the quilt was too busy for anything other than meandering but it turned out that the modern design “Bauhaus” worked really well with the rectangular blocks.

Rectangular Nine Patch


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Puppy Dog Pals

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While Janet was working on Ducks in a Row, the quilt for her granddaughter, her grandson was visiting, and after watching her sew for a while he asked if she would make a quilt for him too. Of course she agreed, and together they went fabric shopping. He picked the fabrics and had his say in how the top was put together, and he picked the backing fabric, a cuddly minky with paw prints because he loves his two dogs. I have a pantograph called “Puppy Paws” that wouldn’t have been an obvious choice for this quilt but in combination with the backing fabric it was just perfect. What a great job he did on this project!

Puppy Dog Pals


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Ducks in a Row

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Janet made this quilt as a gift for her granddaughter who was starting college this past September. She asked for just a simple quilting design, and “Celtic Scroll” worked well and picked up the circular designs in several of the fabrics.

Ducks in a Row


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Elephant Abstractions

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This is the second Elephant Abstractions quilt I have quilted for a customer, and this one was pieced by Monette. She liked the idea of quilting different parts of the elephant with different designs which is what I did for the other one. I didn’t quilt it exactly the same though – that would have been boring – but left some things untouched that I really liked with the first version like the ribbon candy for the tusks or the escargot/pebble filler for the tail. I came up with a completely different design for the trunk and used a different leaf design for the background. Monette’s quilt also has borders which the first one didn’t. The very wide outer border is a busy batik fabric, and while the quilting is visible in reality, it doesn’t really show up in the pictures.

Elephant Abstractions


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Poinsettia Table Topper

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This Poinsettia Table Topper is a Judy Niemeyer design and was pieced by Monette. Her fabric choices make it look very elegant but unfortunately the quilting doesn’t show very well. The backing was a gorgeous white, silver and grey poinsettia print, just perfect for this project, but the quilting didn’t show at all in the pictures I took. Monette asked for custom quilting, and although I wouldn’t want to piece one of these, I enjoy quilting them very much.

Poinsettia


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