This was a really fun quilt to work on. I love quilts with interesting shapes in the background that allow me to go crazy with the free motion quilting.
Author Archives: Life in the Dog House
Nazira, Judi and Jen’s Quilts
I made these three lap quilts for 3 amazing ladies that I used to work with. First there was the Little Black Dress quilt that I used ‘Tickle Too’ to quilt it.
Next is Scrumptious that I quilted with ‘Clematis’
And finally the third quilt that I also used ‘Tickle Too’
Susan’s BOM
Once again this quilting job morphed from a simple edge to edge design to fully custom quilted. I’m so glad that it did. While it would have looked just fine with a simple E2E design, I think the custom quilting really made it sing.
Susan wasn’t particularly in love with the pieced blocks so she didn’t want the quilting to emphasize them. She gave me full control to do whatever I wanted so I went a little crazy. I went through a ton of thread but I think the end result was worth it. I just love how quilting adds such texture and depth to a quilt top.
This is one of those quilts where the FMQ looks great on the front and the back.
Donation for Quilts of Valour
Last fall I was very lucky and won a fat quarter bundle from Sew Sister’s Blogathon Canada. It was Northcott’s Stonehenge OH CANADA line. I knew immediately that I would use the fabric to make a quilt for Quilts of Valour.
There was a ton of ruler work on this quilt. My hand ached from holding the ruler too firmly.
I added an extra 1/4 inch red flange under the binding to give the quilt a little extra border.
Leftovers IV
I loaded this quilt on my frame 3 different times before it was finally finished. I had to keep taking it of so that I could FMQ other higher priority quilts.
Here is the front and the back of the quilt. You can really see all the detailed quilting more so on the back than on the front.
Here are a few closeup pictures:
Pat’s One Block Wonder
This one block wonder was a full commission quilt for my massage therapist. She gave me this pillow sham to use as my colour inspiration and left the rest up to me.
I used two layers of batting(80/20 and wool) to give extra warmth and loft to the quilt. It was quilted with a floral and loop design called Clematis and a custom feather in the border.
For a OBW, it is very common to use a piece of the original fabric (usually in the border) to show what was used to create the unique hexagons. I used one of my fabrics as the border. For the second fabric, I fussy cut the repeating image of the swiss chard and appliquéd it to a section of plain hexagons. I put a scrap piece of wool batting on the back of the quilt top to trapunto the chard. I then used two layers of batting and dense quilting in the light purple background to give even more dimension to the chard.
I used 6 different fabrics to piece together the backing. I wanted to give Pat the flexibility to flip the quilt over and show the back if she was in the mood for a change. It has a similar colour palette to the front with the introduction of a green.
High Tea again
This is a “boys” version of the High Tea quilt pattern. I used a modern edge to edge design called Bauhaus. It really complements the Zen Chic Barcelona fabric.
High Tea
Another very densely custom quilted finish. First I just did this design in pink and I was happy with it and moved on to quilting the sashing.
Once I finished quilting the sashing I decided that I needed to add a little more quilting. I came back in with orange thread and added the inner petals filled in with pebbles. Still not satisfied I added the inner orange loops.
Then I decided to fill the orange loops with thread to give it more dimension. I was happy with the final design so I advance the quilt and moved on to the next section.. Then I got the bright idea to do some dense quilting in the background to allow the design to really pop forward. I lost track of how much time I put into the FMQ in the 15 white squares but it was substantial.
Leftovers III
I’ve finally finished Leftovers III. It has lots of feathers and detailed quilting in the white background. Unfortunately it was a dull day when I took these pictures so you can’t see the detail and loft created by the quilting.
Shoji Screen
I had a lot of fun quilting this wall hanging It was fully custom quilted and I used two layers of batting: a stiff fusible one (so that it will hang flat and firm) and a high loft polyester. It gave amazing depth to the peacocks and the flowers. I took pictures today in the shade and in full sun. Although the full sun pictures fade out the colours, they definitely show off the dimension created by the quilting and the double batting.
I just love how the quilting shows up on the back of the quilt….such dimension.
Dog House Quilting 