Through The Years

This is not the type of quilt I make. I made this for a contest where one had to use Thimbleberries fabric in 1999. It was a finalist but not a winner.
It measures 61 inches square. It has a traditional feel to it and I do like it.
The reason I am sharing it now is because at lunch Tuesday the subject of their fabrics came up in a conversation between Kathy Metallica Cray and myself.
She said she no longer has any of their fabrics and I know I still have a few of their buck bundles I have used for guild projects, etc.
It is a good quilt but not my style. They did buy the pattern from me to publish a calendar which was never created but I was paid.
I actually designed this in Corel Draw but when I made the units they didn’t work so I made some changes and made a better quilt with them.
When I am creating I really need to work with fabric and not on a computer. I also need to let the quilt talk to me and tell me what it wants to be.

A Touch Of Red - Finished

I finished this quilt with a narrow red binding. It was just what it asked for to complete the piece.
I'm really happy with this.
It has been a long time since I used this much white in a quilt.
The combination of blue and pure white with a red accent is so refreshing.

A Touch Of Red

I designed this for a workshop I taught.
I used a variety of fabrics including Japanese fabrics, Austrian fabrics, Gutcheon polished and plain cottons and Hoffman cotton.

 

 

You can see the freezer paper curved diamond shapes I used to mark the quilting lines. By doing this there will be no lines that I would get marking with something else.on the work.

You can see the lines I quilted using those shapes for the quilting. I have also quilted the borders, and did some ditch quilting before I did this. That quilting follows the patterns in the border fabrics and is not visible in these photos.

The freezer paper designs can be used more than once. I just reused the 4 shapes to again mark my quilting lines. Because I used white thread for all the quilting it is not easy to see all the quilting lines.

All the curved diamond shapes have now been quilted. The only thing left to quilt are the background triangles.

Prove Me Wrong!

I got an email from a friend this morning. She told me how she had taken a beginning quilting class. The teacher said you could NOT get perfect points by sewing a block together on the machine.
My friend, a talented professional costume stitcher sewed hers on the machine and they were PERFECT. The teacher said she was lucky…..NO, she was skillful and the teacher was a poor teacher in my opinion.
I had sewn for years before I began serious quilting. I had sewn almost any kind of clothing from the skin out. I had sewn drapes, bedspreads, slipcovers and just about anything you could imagine.
I have sewn almost all my work on the machine. Some things are easy to machine piece and some are challenging. I want to share a few of the more challenging ones with you today.

I didn’t expect all 16 points in the center of this quilt to come together without a hole in the center and knew I could just applique a circle over the center.

There is absolutely NO hole in the center and everything came out perfectly.

I pieced this Mariner’s Compass point with pieces I cut from a border print. It’s hard to tell where the seam is.

When I look at this quilt it is hard to tell where the seams are on the circular border. 

Yes, I can see them on the closeup, but when looking at the entire circle it is hard to find them.
It all depends on where one’s skills are as to whether it is better to hand or machine piece. They each have their advantages and disadvantages.
I try not to say there is only one right way to do something when teaching.
Yes, I share the way I prefer and think will be easiest for my students.
Whether it is piecing skills, quilting methods and designs, or use of color and design I demonstrate what I think works best.
When students question my ways, I always tell them to “Prove me wrong”!
I think that is a good way to challenge them to think for themselves.