Darrell’s Sampler

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Twenty four years ago my friend Darrell made this beautiful sampler quilt.  She sandwiched it, did some hand quilting and but on the binding but she never did any quilting in the 8 inch wide border. Last week she gave it to me and asked if I could put something in the border. It felt that the quilt needed some soft flowing quilting rather than lines and angles. I chose a free hand  meandering feather motif. Once I was finished the border I felt that the quilt needed something to balance the dense quilting on the border with the rest of the quilt. Darrell gave me the go ahead to put a design in the black sashing around the blocks.  I like the overall look now.  It looks more balanced. 

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She sent me a picture of it on their bed

  

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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