Curved Cross Hatching Border

This is another one of Janet Sansom’s beautiful embroidery quilts.  I had quilted curved cross hatching on a previous quilt for Janet, which she liked. (Click here to see it).  So for this one I wanted to continue experimenting with the curved cross hatching and do something different in the border.  I think it has come up really pretty.

This is the high tech gadget that I use to mark the centre of the feather wreath (which I do with chalk).

Pink Hexagon Quilt

A couple of weeks ago I posted some design ideas for this quilt.  To view the post click here.  Well I ended up not using any of the options I was considering.

Most people liked the curved cross hatching in the centre of the pink, but when I actually quilted it I didn’t like it.  The shape was quite unusual and it just didn’t look right.  So I unpicked it.

However, I did like the actual shape itself, so using the curved cross hatching rulers I came up with a curved diamond spiral shape which I think worked really well.

King David’s Crown

Sorry I haven’t posted for a little while, there has been an “issue preventing the post editor from loading for some users”.  I unfortunately was one of the 'some users'.  But it seems to be fixed now even though I have to load the photos a slightly different way.

I quilted this for Barb in 2008.  Barb is one of my favourite customers and has being bringing quilts to me for years now.  She makes beautiful quilts, often in reproduction fabrics.  But what I like best is that she likes to leave nice areas of plain fabric for the quilting.  Then she entrusts her quilt to me and lets me have fun with it.  As we both love feathers, it’s a match made in heaven.  Barb’s blog is – Love to Quilt.

This quilt is a Michelle Yeo design.  Michelle Yeo is a Melbourne based designer and teacher that makes beautiful quilts inspired by antique quilts.  To view her web site where she has her patterns click here.

I wanted to create something special for Barb in the diamonds, and was really happy with the result.  This quilt won second in the Custom Quilting category in the 2008 Vic Quilters Show.

A “Thank You” Giveaway

Well I have finally finished the My Quilts page.  To view it, please click the link on the navigation bar at the top of the page. This is something I have wanted to do for a while, and it was the followers of this blog that kept me motivated enough to do it all.

                                                                                     

Thank you for showing an interest in my blog.  I find it encouraging and motivating that other people are interested in my work. 

To show my appreciation, I’d like to give something more tangible back!

When I did a workshop with Karen McTavish I was lucky enough to win an autographed copy of her book.  Now I can’t give away my autographed one, but I do have my original copy I can gift to one of my followers. It’s a great book to have!

                    

As the gift is a thank you to my blog followers, you will need to be or become a follower.  Then just add a comment on this post saying that you want to be in the draw.

(And if you want to make a comment about the My Quilts page, or any other of my posts, that is always appreciated).

I will pick the winning name out of a hat on the 15^th of May. I’ll be happy to post it to anywhere in the world free of charge.

If you already own the book, please still enter; and if you win, you can offer it as a gift on your own blog. :)

My First Quilt

Like many quilters, my first quilt was a sampler.  The quilt is hand pieced (the only hand pieced quilt I have made).

Before discovering quilting, I was an avid cross stitcher.  I was working on a cross stitch of a quilt, and I remember thinking it would be nice to sew it into a small quilt to hang on a wall.

In 2001 I moved house, and there was a quilt shop just around the corner.  So I signed up for a beginner’s class.

Well, I was immediately hooked.  I would get up earlier in the morning so I could do some piecing before leaving for work, and I would spend all weekend sewing.  My quilt ended up being a lot larger than the class sample, and there are blocks in there that I drafted myself from pictures.

What I liked most about quilting over cross stich is that there was so much more creativity in the process.  A quilt can look completely different by adding or omitting one fabric.  Fabrics seem to change colour depending on what other fabrics they are near.  The same design can look completely different when done in different fabrics or with different fabric placement.  The design possibilities were unlimited.

It was like a light bulb had gone off in my head, and I knew that this was what I needed to do.

Because the quilt was hand pieced, I thought I should also hand quilt it.  So I signed up for a full day workshop on hand quilting.  By the end of the class I was beginning to get the hang of it but I can’t say I was enjoying it.  The other ladies in the class were exclaiming ‘isn’t this great’, and I was thinking to myself ‘when can I get out of here’.  Hand quilting and I were not a good match.  However, doing the class was a very good exercise as I now knew for sure that I didn’t enjoy hand quilting. 

I left the class, and that very afternoon booked my quilt in to be machine quilted.

I subsequently sent eleven of my quilts off to be machine quilted.  I also hired a long arm to quilt two of my earlier quilts.  I wanted my own long arm so much, but they are so expensive, and the Australian dollar was not fairing well against the US dollar at that time.

I found sending my quilts off to be machine quilted frustrating because I wanted to complete them myself.  I must have driven my quilter nuts with my detailed requests regarding the quilting (without fully understanding how a long arm worked).

Finally in 2003, I decided to bite the bullet and get my own long arm machine – and the rest is history……

Zentangles

As I mentioned in a previous post, I did a Zentangles workshop with Jane Monk last week.  Here is the promised picture.  The top three were done in the workshop, and the one on the bottom I did later.

They are a lot of fun.  I am going to try and do one or two a week. 

Feathered Sashing Tutorial

I found it very intersting when Jenny kindly shared how she does her allover hook feathers at her blog – Jenny’s Doodling Needle  So I thought I would share one way I do feathers in wide sashing.

This is Janet Sansom’s quilt, and is a replica of a quilt I did for her earlier in the year.  If you want to see more pictures of this quilt click here.
 

To make each feather triangle first start with a circle, and then bring each feather up from the base line filling in the triangle. (You might need to click on some of the pictures to get a better view.)

 

Mark the half way point of the sashing.

Draw a line dividing the sashing into two squares.  For different sized sashing it could be broken down into more than just two squares.

Divide each square into quarters by drawing diagonal lines.

You can start at any point as the quilting will be done continuously.  Just be careful to make sure all the feathers go around each square in the same direction - in this case clockwise.

Start quilting the feather triangles.

Follow the path as per the arrows drawn.

When you get to the last square in the sashing row, go all the way around it and head back as shown by the arrows.

When you get back to the start, continue past it to quilt the other side of the sashing row.

Continue quilting the feather triangles following the path as shown by the arrows.

When you get to the end of the sashing row, go around the last square again and continue back to the starting point.

Roll the quilt forward to the next row of sashing, and start again.