Flowers and Feathers

This is Val’s quilt.  She asked me to quilt it identically to how I had quilted a friend of hers who had made the same quilt a while back.  She was able to give me photos of her friend’s quilt so I could refresh my memory.

I really like how the flower and feathers in the very wide border seem to float above the straight lines.

New York Beauty

This striking quilt was made by Lou.  

I had a lot of fun quilting it, and enjoyed designing something special for the border.  I knew Lou liked feathers, so I wanted to design something contemporary that incorporated feathers and echoed the sharp points in the piecing.

The centre I mainly ditch stitched or quarter inched the piecing as I didn’t want to take away from Lou’s beautiful, and very precise work. 

I have linked to Esther’s Blog for her WIP on Wednesdays.

My Dream Fabric Cupboard

When we were designing the upstairs extension it was my dream to have a walk in cupboard entirely devoted to storing my fabric.

This picture was taken with the panoramic setting on the camera.

I had a lot of fun sorting all my fabric, and was surprised to see that I could already almost fill the cupboard.  It is such a joy to have all my fabric in the one place arranged exactly how I want it.  My husband catches me in there from time to time just playing, and asks me if I am ever coming out.

 

Some Final Extension Pictures

As my regular readers would know, a large part of last year was spent in upheaval as an upstairs extension was put onto our house.  In the final few weeks of the project I fell and broke and dislocated my ankle requiring eight nights in hospital, an operation, eight weeks in a cast, six weeks full time in a boot, then six weeks part time in the boot. I am now walking with only a small limp, but as there was a lot of ligament damage it is a slow recovery process.

Luckily the extension was almost finished when I had my accident, but there were still a number of things still to be done.  So whilst lying in a hospital bed, I was rescheduling tradesmen. 

This picture was taken early September, just before my accident.

 

This picture was taken in late November after we had moved into the new space.

Note the windows downstairs have been replaced - it made a huge difference to the overall appearance of the house once we did this.  

This is a picture of the house before the extension – it is hard to believe it is the same house.

Kelmscott Part Two

I have now quilted several variations of Michele Hill’s Kelmscott quilt.   This beautiful example is Ruth’s quilt. 

Ruth asked me to quilt it in a similar manner to the one depicted in Michele’s book, with circles around some of the appliqué, and a combination of background fills of meandering, echoing, and peacock feathers.

To see some other variations of this quilt click the links below.

Val’s Quilt

Noelene’s Quilt

And probably my favourite, Margaret’s Quilt, as she gave me a lot of scope for quilting feathers between the appliqué blocks.

I have linked to Esther’s Blog for her WIP on Wednesdays.

 

Kelmscott Part One

Judith made this gorgeous appliqué quilt for her daughter’s birthday.  It is a variation of Michele Hill’s Kelmscott quilt in her book William Morris in Applique.

Judith chose to have me quilt the background around the appliqué with leaves and scattered flowers.

I will show another example of this quilt tomorrow.

Quilted Pictures

My sister, Kathleen, made these quilted pictures as she plans to illustrate a story she wrote with them.  

My favourite is the little boy that looks just her son.  She took a photo of him and then drew him on the fabric using the photo.  He needed to be sad for the picture, but Kathleen had trouble getting him to look sad in the photo as he kept on wanting to smile.