Mary's Hawaiian Quilt

This is a quilt that was done at the night class. Janet, the teacher, wanted to teach the popular Hawaiian quilt as well as some Sampler blocks. The combination is an eye-catcher. Mary wants me to echo the flower and then just go tropical. The backing a thick and heavy home decator fabric, much like upholstery fabric.

Thursday March 15th: It started to unravel almost immediately. One of the tips I got from the forums was that it was OK to serge the backing. So I did. There is no border so I was afraid that the big edge pieces were on the bias. So I stay-stitched it. It turned out not to be bias but better safe than sorry. Since this was such a big quilt (97" by 97"), I put zippers on it so I could pull it off if I needed to.

Friday March 16th: This is one heavy quilt. I noticed right away that there is drag on the machine. The weight of the backing makes it heavy. Just moving the machine head is a real work-out. By the end of Day 2, my back was killing me.

Saturday March 17th: The center medallion is 38 inches. Massive. To echo the entire medallion would take me the rest of my life. I asked for advice from both the APQS forum and the longarmchat web-site.

Sunday March 18th: 2 more hours of echo. Will it ever end?


Monday March 19th: I got lots of ideas. One of those suggestions was to repeat the trumpet vine design used in the setting triangles inside the center medallion; in the corners. That was a great idea and it saved me from having to do 18 more lines of echo. I think the trumpet looks good. I did those top corner trumpet and finished the echo on top of the center medallion and called it a night.

Thursday March 22nd: 7 more long hours and it was done.

Susan's Scalloped Edge

Susan teaches classes at the Crazy 9 Patch. This is a class sample quilt for a class coming up in March 2007.

I used Superior So Fine 442 Thistle which is a soft purple. The inner border is crosshatched using the Circle Lord. The field is from Fern Meander by Kathie James. The outer border is freemotion ferns. I decided to sew in scallops half an inch apart at the outside of the outer border. I SID the borders on my DSM.

Jody's Mystery Quilt

We had a mystery class at the Crazy 9 Patch Friday night. I really enjoy mystery classes. They are great fun. It's all about the big REVEAL at the end of class. That is when you get to see what your quilt is going to look like.

The hardest part for me is the fabric choice. Martha, the owner of the C9P, doesn't give away the pattern ahead of time...it's all a big secret. So I have to rely on her to help me choose the fabrics. My first mystery was Licorice Twist from ??? book. I insisted on using a fabric collection that contained a striped fabric. Martha tried to steer me away from it. I just told her that she was too bossy and bought the fabric with the stripes anyway. I do love the fabric but it was so wrong for the mystery pattern. So now I just let Martha boss me around about the fabric for a mystery class.

This time she didn't have to, though. One of the other students, Debbie, has a much better eye for color than I do and she was in the shop on the same day that I was selecting my fabric. So we were essentially on the same mission. I was laboring over it and she was just flitting around picking up bolts of fabric. When she laid them on the cutting table, I loved her choices. I complimented her taste and wished, not so secretly, that I had made that choice. I continued my search for the suitable pieces. Then Debbie found some fabric that had just arrived. She adored that collection. So she decided to use the new stuff. And I inherited her original fabric choices. Obviously, Debbie did all the work. HeeHee.

Jody taught this class. The quilt uses very large pieces. It was from Evelyn Sloppy's book, Just One and You're Done. Jody had to drag out the old slide rule and Geometry book so she could make the quilt larger than crib size. The larger blocks also allow you to show off your fabric choices and enable you to use big floral prints.

Jody wanted sand dollars and beach life for this quilt. It is a wedding present for a friend who loves walking on the beach and collecting sand dollars. So I found the perfect choice. It is the panto Simply SeaShells by Michelle Wyman which I found with some help from Joann at the Quilted Rose (our local longarm store - Gammill dealer).

My Santa Fe Quilt

This is another Janet Haas project; the quilt was from a class taught at the local high school. The pattern is pretty ingenious. You just make a rectangle in a rectangle, cut, rearrange and re-assemble it to make a southwest looking block. I quilted the same pattern for Sally (See Sally's Southwestern Quilt earlier this month in this blog).

The focus fabric is from Moda, it looks like a leather tooled purse. Then I chose accent colors pink, green and gold to coordinate with the focus fabric. I used a Moda Shadowplay tan fabric for the background because I wanted to see the quilting that I planned to do. There is an 8-inch border using the focus fabric. I used Signature Taupe Beige cotton thread on top and Bottom Line's Champange prewound bobbins from Superior.

I plan to show it off in class tonight.