Fancy Forest

This is Reneta's version of Elizabeth Hartman's Fancy Forest quilt.  This quilt is a bit of a labour of love.  It has A LOT of pieces!  2016 is the year Reneta committed to sewing her stash, and she was able to make almost this entire quilt less the background and the backing!

I recently quilted Reneta's Fancy Fox quilt with wood grain, and Reneta requested the same treatment on this one as they will be living in the same room.  We decided that the blue Stonehenge backing was a nice compliment.

I love how the woodgrain quilting adds texture without taking away from all of the work that went into piecing the top. There is so much to look at.

Glorious and Free

This stunning quilt was made by Lynn and is her adaption of the pattern "Glorious and Free" by Brandy Lynne Designs which you can see below.  Lynn wanted to make a queen size quilt for her son and daughter-in-law instead of the original that fits within the Quilts of Valour size parameters.

Lynn left left the quilting designs up to me, but requested no feathers and something slightly modern.  I knew the maple leaf had to be the star of the show and I quilted stylized veins with curls.

I added "3's and e's " to the other red selection to keep a similar feel.

I decided to quilt wood grain in the black background section.

The white sections got a contrasting horizontal linear treatment.

I kept the border treatments fairly simple.  Loops,  swirl/banana combo (that needs a better name) and piano keys.  I am grateful that Lynn took the time to stitch down the white flange so it didn't get in the way.

If you are semi-local and want to see this and some other beautiful quilts in person check out the Beausejour Quilt Show.



Beautiful job Lynn!

Pansies in Paradise

 

This beautiful quilt was made by Eileen.  It was a whole lot of piecing, but I think it was worth it.  I certainly enjoyed quilting it. 

This is the original quilt kit that Eileen fell in love with.  The pattern is called Pansies in Paradise.  It was a lap size quilt and was available as a kit.  When Eileen was here visiting we got talking about making it for her queen size bed and how that would change the look of the quilt.  I used my EQ7 software to draw up the layout to help visualize things. This original pattern used 12” blocks.  When we put the 12” blocks into the larger quilt, some of the original feeling was lost as it got quite busy.  I suggested to Eileen that she consider scaling everything up and using 15” blocks.  The result has more of the feeling of the original and it would require less sewing!  (30 blocks as opposed to 63!!!) Eileen bought 3 kits, but really only needed 2 1/2 to create the queen size version.

I think she made the right choice!  The quilt has some breathing room, and you can appreciate all of the pansy fabrics that she was drawn to originally.

 

Eileen is one of my clients who doesn’t care for a lot of feathers.  She did agree to this style to highlight the cream frames.  Everything in moderation!

The rest of the quilting in the body of the quilt was continuous curves, curls and loops and a few straight lines.  We decided that stitching in the ditch was not required in the majority of the quilt.  I only used two thread colors for the entre quilt.  Cream in the frames and one shade of purple everywhere else.

 

The two border fabrics did a good job of hiding what I quilted.  At least you can check it out on the back.

An Eventful Weekend!

I was lucky enough to be able to spend this past weekend with my dear friend Kathy. She drove down to Dauphin from Flin Flon through not the best road conditions.  We spent Thursday doing some Highway 10 Designs business and attended the Crocus Quilter’s Guild meeting.  On Friday we headed to Winnipeg to take in the Manitoba Prairie Quilter's Show.  This isn’t the best picture of us as we were both a little hot and tired because of the crowds, but it was the only picture I got of us together.

A few of Kathy’s clients are members of the Manitoba Prairie Quilters so we got to see some of those quilts on display.  Notice the red ribbon in this picture – it won first place in the large commercially quilted category.  This didn’t really come as a surprise to me, Kathy does beautiful quilting and her client did a wonderful job putting this Arcadia Avenue quilt together.

Another really fun thing for us was seeing the beautiful samples some of the vendors had made of our quilt patterns.  This is City Slicker in the Road 17N booth.  We loved Shari’s version of this quilt. Shari has a lovely shop in Winkler, Manitoba and it is worth the short drive out of the city!

Lesile of Keystone Quilts surprised us with her version of “Not Your Mother’s Rail Fence”.  I’m not sure I would have thought to combine three solids and the modern floral, but the resulting quilt was really eye catching.  She also had a lovely batik version of the Detour runner, but I didn’t snap a photo.

 

Here I am being silly in the Fabriculous booth.  Wendy had this beautiful version of Quarter Sections and I just needed to touch it!  There were Highway 10 Design samples in every corner of her booth.

We returned to Dauphin on Sunday and even though there were some snowflakes coming down we fired up the wood oven to make pizza. Kathy and I only see each other in person a couple of times a year, so it was an occasion worth celebrating.

Kathy headed back to Flin Flon on Monday, but the celebrating continued at our house.  My oldest daughter Kyla turned 18.  I am really the mother of an adult? I’m not sure where the time went! 

Pokeball

I have to admit that when Reneta first showed me a picture of this quilt top I had no idea what it was.   Guess my girls just weren't into the same things as her boys.  For those of you who are like me, this is a Pokeball.  Reneta made this quilt for her 20 year old son, and she is beyond excited to give it to him, because she knows how excited he will be when he sees it.

The upper and lower border panels were quilted really simply so as not to distract from the Pokeman characters.   When it came to the center of the quilt, Reneta suggested stippling and swirls to differentiate the background from the ball.  When it came time to quilt it, I wondered if I should do anything to "round out" the ball.  Reneta was away on a holiday, so I consulted another expert - my good friend Kathy's teenage son Daniel.  He loved the quilt, and had very strong opinion about keeping the pixelated look of the "classic game".  Who was I to argue?  (Thanks Daniel - you helped me more than you know!)  I decided to add u-turns to the black to enhance the feeling.

I love the texture on the flannel back!

As I type this post I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my partner in crime Kathy!  We are headed to Winnipeg this weekend to take in the Quilt Reflections Show being hosted by the Manitoba Prairie Quilters.  Looking forward to seeing the quilts, and the vendors and the other quilters!

Cindy's City Slicker

This is Cindy's version of our Highway 10 Designs - City Slicker Pattern. City Slicker is our jelly roll friendly pattern and  Cindy used Cantik Batik Gemstone 2 1/2" strips in the Northern Lights colorway.  

 Cindy  made this quilt for and with a some help from her 10 year old niece.  We settled on the Fluffy clouds panto, a shiny lilac Magnifico thread, and Quilter's Dream Puff batting to compliment the minkee dot backing fabric Cindy provided.

I really enjoyed working on this cheerful springy version of City Slicker.   Now we just need the last of the snow to melt away, and no more to fall!