Quilting Emergency (siren noise in the background)

A neighbor called me Friday night in a frustrated snit. She is a hand quilter and had decided to try machine quilting a nephew's baby quilt (36" x 42) on her DSM. She was so upset. After quilting diagonally for a short bit, she turned the quilt over and looked at the back.

Horrors...puckers everywhere. (cue dramatic music). She called for an quilting emergency. I told her to bring her quilt over the next day at 4 P.M.

Right on time and in "hover" mode worried about getting this quilt done, she showed me a cute dotted quilt with stars. Very well pieced, she does immaculate work. She had never seen my studio and was amazed at the size of the machine, the thread, etc. Yes, Marie, thread comes in more colors than just white. LOL. Looking at over 200 cones of thread, what color do you think she chose for this dotted quilt?

Yes, she chose white. I explained that I could an all-over ribbons and stars and that it would go pretty fast. She didn't want to leave the quilt, she wanted to help pin it on the rollers and watch me work. Hmmmm.

OK, but I cannot quilt and chat so you chose. "You quilt, I'll watch". She was so surprised that there were stitches on the quilt and I was just moving my hands around. She needs to get out more.

She was walking out the door 70 minutes after she arrived with her nephew's gift all quilted and ready for binding. I don't imagine that she will ever be a real customer, her hand-quilting is divine. But she might tell some of her quilting buddies about me. It's always good to help your neighbor.

Standing Room Only Penguins

This is my current project. The pattern is by
Carol Morissey.

Lone Star

I just finished this one for my church, Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church.

It is 92" x 92". I used Signature Parchment in the white areas, Sealpond Green in the solid and printed green parts and PermaCore May Rose in the 3 red areas. Lots of thread changes The colors were so different, I felt like I had to change. I used 2 battings; Quilter's Dream Select cotton on the bottom and Quillter's Dream Poly Request (their thinnest poly batt) for quilt definition.

The motifs (both corner and triangle) are from Sally Terry's Graceful Victorian. The corner motifs resemble a wreath but it is actually 3 separate swags. That quilting packet is full of goodies.

The corner squares are 24 inches. I felt like doing one thing, like a feather wreath or even that gorgeous split fern I saw Joann Hoffman do on the APQS forum, would have swamped the star. They wanted traditional so continuous curve (with a ruler)...but when the star is that big, with that many diamonds, "traditional" starts looking more like "boring" by the time you get to the pointy end.

I have a 30 inch throat on my Gammill but these squares really had to be done in phases or I would have had to change my thread 2 bizillion times instead of the 1 bizillion I actually did. I laid down the corner motifs and then stepped back and it looked like it was just floating in space. Eck.

I knew that it needed a background fill but what would look good in this big space without getting too dense? My quilting buddies over on MQR suggested that I echo the motif to put a fence around it and then do cross-hatching. Then MQR's Riley Big Shoes said that the 60 degree cross-hatch would look better. That would be more in keeping with all those diamonds in the Lone Star. But oh, the work. I used Pam Clarke's grid lines to mark 2-inch lines. I looked at closer (1-inch and 1.5 inch) ones but besides the exponentially greater number of hours to finish, I thought that it was too dense compared to the star quilting. I marked it with chalk (on a foam brush) and then quilted it using the Diamond Diagonal rulers and then rolled to the next section. The most challenging part was the crosshatch.