Snow in Summer and Midnight Stars

Snow in summer............oh yes please! There is no snow here sadly but a beautiful quilt called "Snow in Summer". It is a Kim Diehl design made by Elizabeth.

That's the before shot and here's for the after quilting shot................................................

Elizabeth made my job easy as her applique and piecing is lovely. I was naturally asked to custom quilt this pretty quilt and Elizabeth chose Matilda's Own Oh Sew Soft polyester batting.

I was keen to give the snowballs some nice movement between the outer snowballs and the inner cluster. It's nice to have some cohesion to blend and frame every design together, I did this by maintaining the cross-hatching through the central sections of each snowball. Hook feather wreaths for the outer section and some straight echoed lines for the central gathering of snowballs.

I backtracked several times over the line of quilting where the cross-hatching lines came together, two reasons: the first to 'hide' my backtracking, the second to create a 'zoom' section for the eye.

A nice detailed background fill of pebbles, swirls, echo's and the odd bit of "McTavishing". The Applique shapes didn't need much more than stitching in the ditch around them and some petals on the flower shapes.

All the quilting was achieved by hand guiding my Gammill with the exception of the cross-hatching and straight lines, I used a ruler for those parts. Because you love the back shots here are two just for you!

Now to share "Midnight Stars" with you. Made by Kerryn of The Country Yard  using two layer cakes by Moda (Black Tie) and a Moda bakeshop pattern to create a lovely sample.

This quilt is leaning on the larger size at 84" square. I used an edge to edge pattern by  Keltia Quilting called "Limetree". It's a nice soft classic pattern. Glide thread "Mocha" was the perfect thread to blend with the creams, greys, tans and black fabrics. The batting is Matilda's Own Cotton/Poly.

                Thank you Elizabeth and Kerryn for your continued support and trust in me.

Lastly I had to share Simon being an "Egg".

It's Twins!

Yes, twin quilts for twin girls!! Sandy, owner operator of Northland's Sewing Centre made two nearly identical quilts for her 19 year old twin nieces.

Sandy asked for both quilts to be quilted the same and I could choose how to quilt them. I did have the brief of light custom and maybe some feathers. Both quilts are the same all except the purple and green on the borders, they are opposite, the corner squares are green on the other quilt and purple wide borders pieces.

A feather wreath in each square was feathery, but with a modern touch with rings in the centre.
The borders needed texture, and more feathers would have been over the top, so lines and meandering it was. This gives a nice play in the light.

I followed through with the feather theme in the purple and green areas, and straight lines in the cream.

Sandy I am sure your nieces with love these quilts. Such a special gift to give are quilts, made with love and given with love.

I have just finished a very different quilt made from satin prize ribbons, you will have to wait to see the whole quilt, as it is heading back to it's owner, but I will give you a sneak peek!

Simon has been 'helping' with office work, you know "Mum will find it helpful if I carefully 'put' this pen on the floor for her".

Willy's Lone Star Log Cabin Beauty!

Hello poppets! What a pleasure this will be to share this stunning quilt with you. Willy is a newbie to patchwork, so with that in mind checkout her beautiful creation that she let me loose on!

Measuring 96" x 88" this quilt is not for the faint hearted. Willy told me it all started with the green fabric, she fell in love with it. Sound familiar to anyone?

Being a passionate quilter the white areas are my favourite spaces to 'hangout' so to speak, these are where my quilting shows best of all.

Willy chose wool batting which is not only warm but has a nice loft to show my quilting off perfectly. All my quilting apart from the circles, cross - hatching and ditch stitching is completely free hand.

               My quilting choices are traditional with a touch of whimsy by way of the tendrils.

Thanks so much to you Willy for your trust and friendship, thank you readers for your continued support and words of encouragement.

A baby boy quilt and a bag.

Hello friends, I sure hope your week has been a happy one. Today I am sharing a baby quilt made by Elizabeth for friends that are expecting a boy.

Elizabeth asked me  to custom quilt this one, so I did have some fun! If you are a regular follower of my blog you will notice whenever I am working on a custom quilt I like to ditch stitch. I know many quilters don't but I feel by ditch stitching you define the piecing and give a real crisp look to the quilt. It is time consuming but so worth it.

For this pretty quilt I pulled out some of my 'gadgets', the straight edged ruler for the ditch stitching and the others for the curves etc.

The quilt measures 35" x 47", Elizabeth chose wool/cotton batting, some of the fabrics are by Bunny Hill.

A feathered border to blend with the feather wreaths and for something a bit different I quilted curved cross hatched squares in the border corners.

A couple of photo's with the perfect light to really show off the quilting!

Got to say, I really do love my job! So many lovely quilts of all kinds. If you follow me along on Facebook you will see the next quilt I have been working on is so different. here is a peek.

I am part of a small group of women who get together once a month to stitch and chat.............no @#*%^$ here! We have a Christmas swap, you know the drill, you pull a name out of the hat and that is the person you make a gift for. Here is what I made Di.

The pattern was from a Moda bake shop book called:Fresh Fabric Treats'................say that ten times with a lolly pop in your mouth!!

You are probably thinking Christmas presents in February?! Well some in the group had lots going on in December and January, anyway why not drag Christmas out a bit longer!
I also made a wee zip pouch and popped some threads and needles inside. I fondly call Di 'The Bag Lady' as she makes some lovely bags and has quite a few! I hope she doesn't mind another.

Until next time........................................................

Customer sampler/round robin quilt

Jacki was part of a round robin group making a quilt designed by 'Janz Designs' ( Janis & Ans) called 'French Connection'. See Kerry's I quilted last year here. Jacki had been collecting fat 1/8th bundles for sometime & thought that this would be a good project to use them up on.

Jacki likes loose quilting, nothing too dense. We used cotton batting & Madeira poly neon threads.
Before I share some of the blocks with you, check out the pieced backing! Jacki loves pieced backings, they sure make for a point of interest.

Some nice big plain blocks to play with my feather wreath stencils.
Because I like some continuity with the blocks on sampler quilts, I just had to add some more feathers.

More feathers anyone???

Thanks Jacki!!

I just wanted to share a cute freebie pattern with you.

I made this for a special friend, hung it on my wall just to look at it & love it so much, I stitched another to keep for myself!!
This is an Anni Downs freebie.( see here for the pattern) Anni's original is made with applique, but I fancied stitching mine. The first I stitched using Cottage Garden Thread, called 'Warratah' the second one I used one called 'Kangaroo Paw', both very similar in colouring. They only took one evening each to stitch. Then I used the fabric I got gifted from Lynette a couple of years back to finish these off. Then bought some lovely wire hangers from my fav quiltshop.

I am hoping to squeeze another customer quilt in before Christmas, as it is needed early next  year......'next year'.......doesn't that sound strange?
Here's hoping you are all well & NOT going crazy with the whole Christmas rush!

Thanks for stopping by.