Baby Basketweave Quilt

I have just quilted a little baby quilt made by Bridie.  Bridie based her quilt on the Denyse Schmidt design from her book Modern Quilts Traditional Inspiration.  The blocks have been scaled down considerably - from the original block size of 13.5 inches to 5.5 inches.

Bridie's quilt has been made for a new born baby girl in a modern colour combination of grey and teal blue.

 

I had fun quilting this quilt, trying to emphasise the basket weave effect with the quilting.  The horizontal lines have been quilted with small figure eight loops with a row of pebbles quilted on the teal vertical sections.

 

 

 

Best wishes Bridie for the new-born baby - I hope this little quilt is received and used with joy.

Flora's Sawtooth Stripe Quilt

I have finished my niece Flora's 18th Birthday quilt.  After the previous post, someone guessed correctly that the design was a Denyse Schmidt Quilt - it is indeed the Sawtooth Stripe Quilt from her book Modern Quilts Traditional Inspiration.

 

 

Flora's quilt has been quilted with the iconic Denyse Schmidt loops which lends the quilt a very modern look.

 

I have included some wonderful orange fabric in the backing of the quilt which was purchased from Surface Art Design - an Australian based fabric design company. Surface Art embraces colour, form and simplicity which usually results in bold, colourful prints.  A single sawtooth stripe has been included across the back of the quilt - here is a snippet of the front and back of the quilt.

 

 

I am thrilled with the lime green and orange colour combination.  I am sure the quilt will look great turned down on Flora's bed.

 

 

Having just finished year 12 in Queensland, Flora is coming down to Melbourne to study at University at the start of 2013.  While the weather in Queensland is such that a quilt is almost unneccesary, I am sure she will make good use her quilt in our much colder climate.

 

Happy 18th Birthday Flora.

Piecing

I don't often seem to get the change to piece any quilts - most of the quilts I make tend to focus on the machine quilting and they are usually wholecloth quilts.  This week, I decided that a quilt needed to be made for an upcoming birthday present and so, I have been enjoying piecing.

As the quilt is for an 18th Birthday, I decided it needed to have a modern look.  The quilt only has two solid colours - a white and green.  I thought I would quickly whip up this  quilt, howevever, there is no way of quickly piecing and trimming back 540, 2 inch half square triangles.

 

 

Slowly, the half-square triangles have come together

 

 

Having finished the half-square triangles, now the quilt is starting to come together more quickly.

 

 

Back to sewing - the birthday is soon!

 

 

 

 

 

Quilt Mania Cover - Red Cross Quilt

I was thrilled to discover that the wonderful Red Cross Quilt I quilted for Linda from Quilts in the Barn is featured on the cover of the current issue of Quilt Mania.  Congratulations Linda, it looks fabulous and I am very excited to have been involved in the making of this quilt. 

 

 

For those who haven't seen this quilt before, please see my previous Red Cross Quilt post including close-ups of this gorgeous quilt.

 

I can't wait for this issue of Quilt Mania to drop into my letter box to discover other pictures of this quilt inside the magazine - it is going to make for some great quilt reading! 

 

Just think Linda, a quilt we have worked on featured on the cover of a magazine which will be on news stands in Paris!  Happy reading.

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Strippy Applique Spring Quilt

I can't believe another Blogger's Quilt Festival has come around yet again.  I have joined in quite a few Blogger's Quilt Festivals and thought I would again - thank you for organising Amy - I always enjoy visiting many of the other quilts.  I know it is the Fall Festival, however, I am sharing what is very much a Spring Quilt given that it is Spring in Australia.

I have recently quilted a very cheerful strippy spring quilt for my customer Karin.  Karin made this colourful quilt for one of her grand-daughters, alternating rows of stripped triangles with strips of appliqued birds.

As Karin's fabrics were very busy and the quilting on the strips of triangles would not show much, we decided to combine edge-to-edge and custom quilting.  The triangle strips are quilted with an all-over design called Daisies Galore.  The applique strips have been outlined around the applique and then quilted freehand with a back-ground fill.

I love the whimsical quilting around the birds.

I hope your Granddaughter is enjoying her beautiful quilt Karin.

Remember to go over to Amy's site and visit many of the other wonderful quilts in the Blogger's Quilt Festival - Fall 2012 - enjoy!

Quilts in the Barn 2012

Last Friday my 12 year old son and I went to the Exhibition at Quilts in the Barn.  This year's exhibition, "Infinite Variety Revisited" was a wonderful display of Red & White Quilts.  To my son's surprise, he too enjoyed the exhibition (especially with a stop at a lolly shop on the way home).

I will leave you with some of the highlights.

A slight bias towards this quilt - see some of my previous posts!

There were many small wallhangings, creating a great display.

A tiny little doll's quilt with matching pillow!

And lots of lovely quilting!

Thank you Linda for another wonderful exhibition at Quilts in the Barn.  Congratulations - I am sure you will have raised lots of much needed funds for breast cancer research.

Diamond Sawtooth Quilt

The following Diamond Sawtooth Quilt is the last in a series of stunning Red & White Quilts I have quilted for Linda Collins of Quilts in the Barn.  This quilt too will feature in the upcoming Quilts in the Barn Exhibition as detailed in my previous post.  As usual, Linda's piecing was incredibly accurate - on this occasion she had paper pieced the half-square triangles resulting in perfect points.

Linda gave me the freedom to quilt as desired, as long as it included feathers.  I spent quite some time designing the quilting elements, using the Divide and Design concepts outlined in Lisa Calle's DVD.  Each triangle was divided and the same element quilted into each triangle either once, twice or four times depending on the size of the triangle.

The border was quilted with a simple undulating feather with straight lines.  The straight lines were quilted using one of the Quilter's Groove Rulers which made the spacing of the lines straightforward.

All was going really well until I decided to remove some of my blue dividing lines with a spray of water.  Being a red and white quilt, I was being conscious of the possibility of bleeding.  I had used the blue wash out pen on the white fabric only and had used chalk on the red.  You can imagine my horror when on spraying the white fabric, being careful to avoid any red fabric, a pink stain appeared - the backing fabric had bled into the top fabric.  At 11pm on a Saturday evening, I took to the computer googling madly for solutions to this problem - I did take some comfort from other quilters who had experienced the same problem.  After a restless night, I rose early to finish quilting the quilt and visited the supermarket to buy some Colour Catchers.  I consulted Linda who confirmed that none of the fabrics had been pre-washed.  We agreed that I would was the quilt, hopefully rinsing out all the excess dye including the bleeding which had occurred.

I tested some off-cuts of the backing fabric in some warm water in the bath - it turned pink!  Eventually, the quilt went in with a whole packet of  Colour Catchers.  Again, the water turned pink.  After a second and third rinsing, all the colour appeared to be gone and fortunately, the stain had washed out as well.  I am not sure how the Colour Catchers work, but they do appear to be effective - each of the sheets started out white.