Upstate Quilt - for Sew Many Creations

A quick note for anyone in upstate New York! My friend Jess, the owner of Ruby Scissors Quilt Shop in Glens Falls, NY is opening a second location! The new shop is in Towne Center Plaza in Clifton Park, NY. The address is:

1603 Route 9

Clifton Park, NY

Check out her facebook page for more details!

Now that I'm in the midst of quilting for Fall Market, I'm pulling out photos of projects that I did for Spring Market!

I've partnered up with Jessica of Sew Many Creations to quilt her pattern samples! She was my very first long arm client, and I owe her so much for having faith in me!

This pattern, Upstate, fits in really well in the Adirondacks! It wasn't my usual style of quilting, but I find that those are the most fun to quilt. It really stretches my imagination to work on projects like this, and I really love how it turned out.

 

The pattern alternations tree blocks and solid blocks - in this sample, Jessica used a really fun batik argyle in her solid blocks. For the argyle blocks I simply quilted straight lines following the fabric pattern.

I had so much fun with the tree blocks! The trees have swoopy branches with a woodgrain trunk and swirly lines in the background. The background batik reminded me a lot of falling snow!

I forgot to take pics of the borders! I quilted a swirl in the thinner green borders and used more straight lines in the argyle border.

Thanks for letting me quilt for you, Jess!

Star Quilt for Stitch

I met Tami, the owner of Stitch, when I was at Quilt Market in Pittsburgh this spring. She is so sweet, and I could tell right away that she had a fun modern shop. If you're in the Des Moines area, be sure to check out the shop! I only wish the shop had been open years ago when I would drive through Des Moines to visit my sister in Ames!

Tami sent me this cute little quilt to be custom quilted. Her only request was that the quilting not be so dense that the quilt isn't soft and snuggly.

I swirled the dark grey background to give the quilt great texture without distracting from the fun piecing.

In the pieced borders I quilted straight lines about 1/4" apart that shifted with the angles of the improv piecing.

And for the stars I quilted straight lines in the points and a simple flower in the centers.

It's so fun to quilt for others, because I get to play with so many different styles of piecing! Thanks for having me quilt for you, Tami!

Quilts for Cloud 9

I have two projects to share today! Cloud 9 contacted me to piece and quilt these projects for them, the first of which was done just before Spring Market. The second quilt was done earlier this summer. You may have seen peeks of these on my Instagram!

The FREE! pattern for this first quilt can be found here.  The fabric is available through JoAnn Fabrics, and is called Backyard Garden. The pattern was designed by Melanie Shortmas-Tuazon, and the fabric line was designed by Michelle Engel Bencsko.

In the sample that I sewed up, the center shape is not pieced, but rather cut from a single print. This pattern sews up really quickly, and it's a great way to highlight some large scale prints!

I worked on this quilt when I was still quite uneasy about quilting feathers. It's actually kind of fun to pull up these photos and see some of my older work!

We were under a little bit of a deadline for this project, so tried to keep the quilting simple with some straight lines and easy feathers.

You can see a brief Cloud 9 blog post on this project here.

The second project is also a free pattern! This fabric line and pattern were both designed by Michelle Engel Bencsko.

This project also includes some feathers! So fun to see how much I've changed and learned. I really like the design that the feather arcs create - it reminds me of a butterfly.

The straight lines create such great texture! Sometimes I have to remind myself to use something else for a background fill!

It was really fun to work with Cloud 9 on these projects!

The DNA Quilt

We are two weeks into the school year, and I'm trying my best to keep a more regular work schedule. Along with that, I have a goal of blogging at least once a week! I have a huge backlog of projects of my own to share, along with some long arm work that I did for others.

I made this quilt this spring when I had a little lull in my schedule. I started with a stack of 10" squares, and initially just sewed them together into a giant patchwork top. There was no sparkle to the quilt top, though, probably because all of the prints are a medium tone. I didn't want to give up on these great colors, though, so I cut into my quilt top and inserted black strips of varying widths. I used a black batik, which is so wonderfully dark. The black seemed to do the trick, because now the colors really pop!

With the black strips inserted among the bright colors, the quilt reminds me a bit of DNA running through a gel. :) 

For the quilting, I quilted swirly "mermaid hair", as I like to call it, in the brightly colored sections. And in the black strips I quilted curved lines. Batiks can feel a bit stiff sometimes, so I wanted to keep the quilting soft.

The binding is a orange batik in a fun zig zag print!

For the back I used several batiks that I had on hand.

The quilting is really visible on the black print in the back! I love the aqua thread against the black.

Quilt stats:

Name: DNA Quilt

Fabrics: Hoffman Batiks

Size: 54" x 67"

I'm listing this one on Etsy!