Great things in small projects

I have a few customers who for a number of years, have allowed me to quilt for them.  One is Marge. Marge is an older lady who is working her way through her stash and finishing smaller projects.  So, every so often she calls and I drop by for a visit and pick up a collection of table runners, wall hangings and small quilts.  This last visit resulted in 4 lovely quilting projects.

I just LOVE this wall hanging.  Marge's plan was to finish it and hang it at the cabin....

I used a double batt of cotton/poly blend and a wool on top to give some dimension to the quilting.  I knew I wanted to quilt this heavily when I started. I also find that doubling the batts on a wallhanging help it to hang much better.  I started by stabilizing the quilt and stitching in the ditch in the background pieces.

I outlined each of the shapes with WonderFil DecoBob (an 80wt polyester thread) and some spaces were stitched 2-4 times and they don't show the heavy thread use.

I quilted the background sections with feathers (in the darker strips) and a fern in the lighter background strips.   A little bit of straight line stitching helped to show off the feathers.

Once all the back ground and outlining was stitched, I doubled up some threads to highlight the flowers and leaves.  I combined a dark purple with a variegated purple for some shading effects in the flowers.

 Gotta get a better camera for those close-up shots I want to take.

I always like to quilt a design that will work well with the fabric or piecing design of a quilt.  This little table runner called for simple quilting in the squares (free hand continuous curves) with something special for the centre. 

 I repeated the leaves and curls from the quilt centre in the border.

I quilted this basket quilt after watching a couple of lessons in Angela Walter's latest craftsy class, Borders and backgrounds.  It was a fun little project to try something new.  Love that Marge allows me to play on her quilts.

I stitched continuous curves in the baskets, but the bottom looked empty, so a curl was born!  It also allowed me to stitch this quilt pretty much without any thread cutting.  Very efficient way of quilting.

The border wavy lines were very quick and easy to stitch and I think they are perfect on the printed border fabric.

And last but not least, this table runner was quilted using a curved ruler for all the quilted lines,  

I worked my way back and forth across the quilt and as this table runner was very simply pieced, I felt it needed to be simply quilted.  I have since thought that this would have been a great quilt to try some really funky detailed fill designs.  Maybe on the next one.

So, I've delivered Marge's quilts and she will bind them up and put them to good use.

Estes Park Whole Cloth Quilt

I am very lucky to be a part of a local quilt group for Longarm Quilters.  We meet on a monthly basis and encourage each other in various ways.  Each year we participate as a group at the Heritage Park Festival of Quilts by displaying our work in a group format.

For 2016, it was decided that we would give members opportunity to participate in 2 groups.  Some of us did Log Cabin Quilts and some of us did Wholecloth quilts.  Right away I knew that I was going to participate in the Wholecloth Group.  I took a class from Barbara Chaney waaaay back in 2003 at the first ever Harriet Hargrave's Machine Quilting Celebration.  My first day of classes was with Barbara and English wholecloth quilts.  This is what I drafted in class.  It's been rolled up in the bin ever since.  So, I pulled it out and re-worked it for our size requirement (40" max per side).

I chose a lovely neutral grey solid fabric and marked out all the outlines with a white marking pencil.  

 I loaded the quilt and started quilting.  My daughter chose this bright neon lime Fabulux thread from WonderFil.  I wasn't sure, but she assured me it would look good.

I thoroughly enjoyed the quilting process on my Handi Quilter Avante.  And I agree with my daughter, the lime looks good against the grey.

You can see below that I got through a good chunk of the quilting.  But as I rolled the quilt, I noticed that the tension was not as perfect as I expected.  Also, there was a rotten "knocking" sound which meant to me that the needle tension was too tight.

I played with the tension, but couldn't get it to be just right.

        

I ended taking my machine off the frame and taking it with me when I went to Edmonton in April to teach at Central Sewing Machines.  The guys cleaned and oiled.  The only thing the technician said was that I was using the "wrong" bobbins.  These were new to me, and I have not used them since and have gotten good tension.

 So, I decided to start over.  When I went back to the store to get more grey, they didn't have it, so I chose this lovely teal instead.  The pictures show blue, but it's a lovely teal.

I marked and loaded the quilt.

 This time I chose WonderFil's DecoBob thread.  It's an 80wt polyester rather than the 40wt Fabulux.

I started by quilting in each section and then went back the quilted the background fill.  Because I had a cotton and a wool batt (to get as much loft as I could) I was afraid of the fabric shifting at the edges. I quilted lines spaced 1-1 1/2" apart to stabilize, then went back and filled in with dense piano keys.

 I spent a lot of time with my nose very close to the quilt.  I outlined as much as I could.

I then filled in with very dense "squiggles".

 Once the marking lines were removed the quilt looks great!

.

 It was hanging behind the RCMP building at Heritage Park,

I had my husband hold it up to the light so we could get a better picture.

 I printed the label on fabric with all the details.