Friday, January 18, 2013

My 'Recipe Card' Quilt

When I was at The Log Cabin patchwork shop in Germany with Marijke and Renee last year, I 'liked' and bought half a metre of this colourful fabric that was for making a bag. I, as usual, didn't really know what to use it for and had no plan for it. Just happened that, one night, I came across a picture of this particular quilt named 'Recipe Cards' in a catalogue from Keepsake Quilting (I'm one of the shop's on-line customers). I, then, started to calculate and scribble the measurements of the fabrics for the quilt in my notebook, working backward from the finished quilt size given. It's my 'relaxation' after work, and suddenly, there was a purpose for the piece of fabric from the trip. :-) At the same time, this would allow me to 'indulge' my love of sunny orange colour. Perfect.! ....Although the piecing wasn't difficult, I had to unpick a few sections when I wasn't checking the directions of the pieces with the pattern while sewing them together. The background fabric was soft and easily stretched as I don't normally use spray starch on my quilt tops. So, it was a good opportunity to 'float' the quilt top when quilting it on my wonderful Gammill Statler Stitcher. The quilted quilt was (and is) beautiful, and I had none of the problems anticipated even though it's the first time I utilised the technique. To match the feature fabric on the quilt top, I decided on the quilting pattern named '2394 Dogwood Flower E2E' by Tammy Finkler.








Tuesday, January 8, 2013

'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' Quilt

I bought this 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' quilt kit when the fabrics first became available a few years ago. It's an easy quilt top to piece but finding a block of time to finish it in one pass was much harder, so taking quite a while to get done.!! There was a generous amount of fabrics given in the kit, enough for me to also use as part of the quilt backing. It was always my intention to make the quilt for my Sunshine, and he's now using it. The cushion was my most recent Christmas present but it has to be 'lent' to my Sunshine for 1 billion days in return for me to have the story book (his first birthday present) to read for ONE day, and that's fair.!!! The quilting pattern, 'Caterpillar pano_02640', was by Kim Diamond, and of course, it was quilted on my wondeful Gammill Statler Stitcher.








Friday, January 4, 2013

Before AND 'a very happy' After

....My best attempt at longarm quilting, so far....

BEFORE



 
....and a very happy AFTER