Pineapple Quilt

It has been over two months since I have added anything new to this blog!  I have been quilting (among other things) and I hope this quilt makes up for the long silence.

Reneta made this wonderful quilt top from a tutorial by Jackie Padesky .  (Reneta did change the pineapple tops slightly.)  Reneta loved this quilt top and decided it deserved some "super dense over the top fabulous quilting".  No pressure! How to handle the pineapples came fairly easily, but it took me a long time to decide what to do as the background spaces in the quilt were not symmetrical.  Once I had the idea to include the "hibiscus like" flowers the rest fell into place. 

I used two layers of batting to make the quilting really pop.  A layer of Quilter's Dream Blend on the bottom, followed by a layer of Quilter's Dream Puff on top.

Reneta had a pieced backing, and although things turned out fine, I wouldn't recommend this much piecing on a back with dense quilting on the top, as the risks for a pleat or a messy looking back are high in my opinion.

I have quilted many quilts for Reneta and she always has a vision and often challenges my creativity.  This time she challenged me to step outside my box to complete her vision and I am really glad that I did.  I think I might need one of these for myself!

Darling Little Dickens

Cheri made this sweet quilt for grandbaby #2 that is due in July.  It will be a surprise if it is a boy or a girl so the first quilt this lucky baby will receive has a nice neutral color palette.

Cheri used a fabric line called "Darling Little Dickens" by Moda, and when I first looked at it I thought I saw carrots and peas and doughnuts and chicken legs.  Upon closer inspection it is actually carrots and peas and sheep and bears among other things!

Cheri and I debated between putting a panto on this or doing a simple custom.  In the end the delicate fabrics and simple layout were calling out for custom.  I did not quilt on the prints, rather in the ditch around them, and added single loops in the sashing and a triple loop in the border.

  

The backing a piece of beige Fireside fabric and I really enjoyed working with it and the end result.  It is far less messy and less stretchy than any of the other cuddle or minkee fabrics.  Fireside is a 100% polyester fabric made by Moda.  It has a really nice feel in your hand.

I love the quilt and the poppies that bloom for just too short a time in my front yard!

Star Blanket

I have appreciated the beauty of the traditional star blankets for a long time, but up until now have never had the opportunity to work on one.  I was very excited when Shirley called to see if I would quilt this one that she was making for her son.  

This quilt is a graduation gift for Shirley's son who will be going on to study Natural Resource Management in the fall.  She wanted simple quilting, so we decided on ditch stitching the star section (which would traditionally be done by hand), and a large water meander for the background.

Shirley provided a extremely lofty batting, and I almost couldn't fit the quilt roll in my machine!  I wasn't able to use a ruler for the stitch in the ditch work, as my foot could easily slip over the ruler due to the thickness of the batting, which was dangerous to the ruler and my hand.  It is a good thing my Innova tracks so easily in all directions as I free-handed all of the star section.

I outlined the motif in the top and bottom borders for a simple finishing touch.

Oriental Sampler & My method for the last row of a panto

This lovely sampler quilt belongs to Vanda.  She loves Oriental fabrics and it was neat to see a sampler pieced from them instead of the more typical traditional fabrics.

We used a dark gold Magnifico thread and one of my newer pantos called "Breath of the gods".  It gave a really nice texture to the quilt.

I had a bit of an "Aha!" moment when doing my last couple of pantos.  I am going to share my process for the last row of a panto as I have a system down that really works for me.

When I am ready to advance the quilt, I place a camp behind my front wheel to mark a spot on the partial row on the bottom of the panto.  (The read dot is a little faint, but I think you can see it.)

I then advance the quilt and place the needle directly above the same spot on the panto.

Now to figure out how far I need to stitch to cover the end of the quilt.  It is never a full row.  I go to the front of the machine, and stitch down the edges of the quilt.  I then place the needle about 1" past the bottom edge of the quilt.

I then go the the back of the machine and place a clamp in front of my front wheel.  I now have given myself a boundary to not pass.  You can see the red dot shows how much of the panto row that I need to stitch.   I used to lay rulers out along the length of the panto, but this is much simpler.  I sew normally from right to left and when I hit the clamp I then sew towards the left until I can rejoin the the line and continue sewing the pattern.

Here is what the end result looks like at the bottom of the quilt.  A very easy way to end the panto, and uses up the least amount of batting and backing possible.

Black and White HST Quilt

This striking quilt belongs to Winnie.  She won the blocks at our local guild.  It is hard to get a sense of the size of this quilt.  The triangles were made from 14" squares! Please note: There is no commerical pattern available.  Winnie came up with layout on her own after winning the scrappy squares.

I had a hard time deciding what to quilt on this one. It is going to be a wedding present so I wanted something special, and I knew I wanted black thread on the black and white thread on the white. Many days of doodling were involved!

 I wanted to emphasize the center star so I added "less stress feathers" there and in the top and bottom rows.  This was the first time I tried those feathers and I really am pleased with how they look.  I think they will be in my repertoire from now on.

To balance out the feathers I added straight lines in the outer most triangles and this diamond and curl motif in the rest.

The outer border got half a feather plume to fit the space.

 I love the cheerful backing fabric she chose too!

It seems that no matter how careful you are when working on a black and white quilt, those black thread have a way of migrating underneath the white fabric.  If I saw them early enough I could utilize one of the cool features of my Innova machine - the gas assisted lifting top fabric roller. It isn't a feature I use all that often, but it came in handy more then once on this one!

 If I've already done some quilting and trapped then errant thread, I had to resort to the fine crochet hook.

 Another cool Innova feature that I used a lot for this quilt was my cross hatch ruler system.  The ruler attaches to the guide bar at the back of the machine and is extremely stable.  There have been many times that I have wondered if the cross hatch system was a good purchase or not.  After putting it through the paces this time, I am really glad I got it.  It made all those long diagonal line so much easier.

One more thing to share.  On our recent trip to Winnipeg we were trying to figure out what was holding up traffic in both directions.....

All the Friendly Manitobans stopped for the Goose Crossing!