A Few of My Favorite Things - Trunk Show Linky

This is a fun Blogworld quilt show, hosted by Soma at Whims & Fancies. I am spotlighting my top three favorite quilts that I've finished entirely on my own, with bonus favorites tagged onto the bottom that I had quilted by professionals.

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"25th, Baby!"  

This one took me just over a full calendar year of my top attention priority to construct and quilt. I made it to celebrate our 25th anniversary, which was in August 2014. I finished it in October of that year.

Cutting:  39:10

Piecing:  122:15
Pin-basting:  7:30

Quilting-
  Stitch in Ditch:  22:05
  Detail Work:  103:45
  Arcs:  10:00

Attaching Binding:  6:10 (includes hand cutting the edge and zig-zagging for stability)
Finish Work (cleaning papers off, tying & tucking ends):  62:05

Handstitching Binding down:  18:35

It is a huge king size quilt, finishing at 98 x 110 inches, and it was all quilted on my table-top domestic Sapphire 875Q.

It has monogram and commemorative quilting in the central rings

For more details, you can see its finish report post HERE.

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"Semper Fi - Combass"  

This was made this year in honor of my son-in-law's acheivement in graduating from the Marine Corps basic training. NOT an easy thing AT ALL!  

Finished this past August, this was an original design and as with all my work, was quilted on the desktop Sapphire 875Q. 

I used trapunto on the central medallion and touches of metallic gold thread here and there. 

I'm sure the end result with the perfect Marine Corps feel is just as key to my absolute love of this quilt as is the pride and love I feel for our Marine.

If you're interested in more details, its finish report is HERE. 

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"Run, Kitty, Run"  

This is the first quilt I made with "serious" free-motion quilting throughout. It is my first happy feather work, too. 

Finished in July of 2013, this was made as a special thank you for a friend whose personal journey to fitness profoundly affected me (she lost over 150 pounds through changing her diet and running). Her example got me off my tush and into a much healthier lifestyle. I don't doubt that it actually saved my life.

Those are 85% reductions of her favorite running shoe's footprint!

And she was famous for encouraging everyone to just do whatever they could to get healthier by saying: "Every Step Counts!" So I quilted that on each corner with a heart for the fourth. Who cares if you can't actually run or do long mileage? Seriously - every step you take is more than the old you sitting all day at a desk or sofa did!

If you're interested in more details, its finish report is HERE. 

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Favorites that were quilted by professionals:


(These are listed in order of finish, and clicking on their name will link to their detailed finish reports.)

"Sailing with the Flying Needles", quilted for me by Patty Butcher, and finished August 2011. 

I adore the embellishments I put on this and the fun design I came up with for the block-of-the-month sailboats that I got from our guild's drawing the summer before. 









I even love its applique-sailboat label!














"Amaretto Cottage", a huge king size quilted by Margaret Solomon Gunn, was finished in March 2013. 



It frequently graces our bed, and I just LOVE the way she brought very nice organic order to the varied block-of-the-month pieces.




"Wild Rose Cottage", a queen size quilted by Kathy Schwartz, was finished in April 2013. 

I just adore how cheery and homey this block of the month turned out, and it looks fabulous hanging over our grand piano when it's having a turn.

"Dragonfly Party 1" -and- "Dragonfly Party 2", quilted by Kay Bell and Judi Madsen, these twins have a very special story, and are each works of art! I finished them in July 2013. 
The quilters were given carte blanch to do whatever they wanted, and it's beautiful to see the effects they achieved. These have cool appliqued labels, too, and their colors are far nicer than this photo shows. But it's an awesome shot at the Air Force Academy! 

You really want to follow the link to see the details of what Kay and Judi quilted.


Kay:



Judi:



Me:  :)





"Heather Bear!" was made to celebrate our daughter's graduation from college, and was quilted by someone local because I ran out of time. 



Finished in May 2014, it is made from their school colors. (It took a year of occassional shopping to find a great border fabric that was not ostensibly Christmas!) Its back incorporates favorite photos from those years and giant bear claws for their mascot.




I hope you enjoyed my little "trunk show." Check out the link-up for some really great eye candy from other quilters!

Trunk Full of Quilts 2015

Blogger's Quilt Festival - "25th, Baby!!"

Wow, am I excited!  I've finally finished stitching the binding down on my double wedding ring 25th anniversary quilt - barely in time for this fall's Blogger's Quilt Festival! [Amy, of Amy's Creative Side, has undoubtedly spent countless hours organizing and facilitating this show that has a spectacular list of sponsors, so I give her my heartfelt gratitude.]
This is being entered in the "Home Machine Quilted" Category.

"25th, Baby!!"

Check out those crazy points in the scallops - yes, they took a long time! In fact, everything about this quilt took a long time. (More on that later)

At finish, this king-size quilt measures 98" x 110" and weighs 12 pounds. It shrank about 6 inches each way with the heavy quilting.

This is Isabeau's most favorite quilt - She never misses an opportunity to lay on or in it!

I've been working on this baby since August 21, 2013. That's right. It's been the priority project for over a year! 

I was looking for the elegance of the curves that the traditional piecing for double wedding ring quilts achieves - with the round lines continuing through the connecting diamonds rather than having hard-edged diamonds splatted on top of the arcs as in the faster methods. So I used the Omnigrid cutting templates that I'd found at a "yard sale" however many years ago. 

To get a controlled scrappy effect, I used some fabrics from my stash, mixed with a bunch of new fat quarters, for the arcs. The background, backing, and diamond yardages were purchased new for this quilt. The batting is Hobb's Tuscany Washable Wool, one layer. I would have loved to put a layer of 80/20 cotton underneath for even better faux trapunto results, but that would have been way too heavy for me to move around while free-motion quilting. I work at a table-top machine, so weight can become a serious issue at this size!

[Several months ago I made a TIPS post about piecing traditional DWRs so I could remember strategies that helped and share everything that I found useful.]

I just love how the quilting came out on this!

The central quilting design is "Megan's Feathers" by Donna Kleinke. I bought the digital file, then printed it out so I could make Golden Threads patterns to pin onto my ring centers to quilt through (I had already stitched in the ditch on everything to stabilize the quilt. In the future, I'd find it less work to trace the design onto the top before sandwiching everything.) I made my own motifs for the melon portions and the diamonds. 

[I also made a TIPS post about quilting a king size on a table-top machine.]

We were married on August 23, 1989 in Manti, Utah

25 years later, we are a little heavier, a lot wiser, and still building a life together! 

I wanted to personalize the quilting on our quilt, so in the center I made an anniversary tribute area:

The very middle is a "C" monogram with a floral fill, 

and there's an "L" and an "S" to either side:

 

There is a 1989 spot,

and a 25th spot:

I had trouble figuring out how I wanted to "fence" this grouping off from the overall quilting, and ended up doing a ropy "border" that filled the oddball corners with these hearts and the background lines.

I used a 50-wt thread on the pink sections, and 100-wt silks on the diamonds, all matching. I had left the arcs unquilted other than the ditch work, because I wanted them to stand out dimensionally. But I saw that it had some collapsing going on when the quilt wasn't perfectly flat, so with the walking foot I put in a wavy stitch that my machine has, using a beigy-green thread that I had on hand.

It was the perfect touch - stabilizing the arcs in a gorgeous way that allowed the puff to stay tall without distracting from the quilting designs in the backgrounds.

The back is just as gorgeous as the front! 
What a pretty whole-cloth effect:

So now we can finally put this on our bed - It's so nice to have a second king size quilt, just in time for it to snow in a couple of nights! No more drafts sneaking in because the queen sizes let leaks through on the sides when we want to stack more than one on top of us!

I did keep track of the time that everything took as I went along, because I knew it was going to be the most monumental quilt I'd ever made. All on a table-top domestic machine, too!

Cutting:  39:10

Piecing:  122:15
Pin-basting:  7:30

Quilting-
  Stitch in Ditch:  22:05
  Detail Work:  103:45
  Arcs:  10:00

Attaching Binding:  6:10 (includes hand cutting the edge and zig-zagging for stability)
Finish Work (cleaning papers off, tying & tucking ends):  62:05

Handstitching Binding down:  18:35

Before any family or friends ask me if I'll make them one of these, let me say that between the intensity of the work involved and the immense amount of calendar time it took, I will never do it for less than fair pay for my hours. At my current skill levels, I'd charge $35/hr for cutting and piecing, and $25/hr for the quilting. For the finishing work and the hand stitching time on the binding, I'd go down to $15/hr, because I do play a movie in the background while that's happening (although I only hear it rather than actually watching). So that makes this quilt worth $9,717.30!!

If I were a lawyer, mind you, it would be at least $175,346.25!!!!

Nobody I know can (or would) pay that kind of money for a quilt, so I can rest peacefully, knowing I don't need to make another one.  ;D

h! Voting is HERE during Nov 1-7 at the Quilt Festival for this category

WIP - Binding, Masking, and FMQ

I haven't done a WIP post in forever. How fun to have time for one again.  :D

I **finally** finished all the clean-up work on my king-size double wedding ring a couple of days ago! That part alone took exactly 62 hours, and I started the process early in August. So now I "just" have to get the binding stitched down for a long-awaited special finish. This is my top priority project.  I'm 5/38 finished, and I figure it'll take about 16 more more movies to get all the way around. . .

Those points with their double inner angles and skinny acute tips are BUGGERS to fiddle with! And the only way to secure them well enough for sewing up is with straight pins. Makes for porcupine work if you don't pay careful enough attention when you shift around.  heh!

I just love looking at the quilting on this - wow, am I happy with it! And to think that I did it all on a mere domestic table-top machine...

Two other projects get almost-daily focus. When my fingers are just too tired from fine hand stitching, I go down to the machines and work on the FMQ for Kelly's second Joseph Smith quilt. Some of the latest work includes the vases and vines in the bow-tie area:

The third official WIP has to be kept completely off my blog and I can only sneak in short work times when both of two people are gone from the house. I keep a masking project on hand, ready to "throw" under my needle like a leader-ender project so I can snip off the chaining work of the real project and hide it away quickly. 

I'm getting very tired of only working on reproduction stuff UFO/NETY stash. Also, while it's absolutely gorgeous, my DWR has been in front-and-center position for 14 months straight, so I set aside the Thanksgiving wallhanging I'd been using for my masking project and pulled out this perky, far more modern project. 

I love my Boomerang fabrics!! They're a fun hodge-podge of scraps from my bin, old pieces from my stash, and brand-new fat quarters from a shop in the Springs. I started working on these back in February for a NewFO, but put them away at the end of that month as this project was not a priority. But it's perfect for lifting my "I miss moderns blues".  

Now they just need a side strip of white before I start laying them out for assembly. I love scrappy quilts!

And what a fun pattern to work with. It's by Emily Herrick over at Crazy Old Ladies. 

This is my second go-'round with the pattern. I made a smaller version with it as a baby quilt from my stash early in the year. 

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Linking up at

Esther's WOW

Leanne & Nicki's Scraptastic Tuesday

Lee's WIP

Marelize's ANYTHING GOES