Karen's Star Sampler Quilt

I've been trying to catch up on my posts for all the quilts that I'm behind on posting about, but I had to post about this quilt ahead of the rest!

This is another quilt of Karen's.  I just finished this quilt for her last week.  She is an amazing piecer and I love quilting her quilts!  I was so excited when she sent me this one.

She didn't know quite what kind of quilting she wanted on it, but she did want feathers in there, which to be completely honest, completely terrified me!  Being a new longarmer, I've doodled feathers on paper, and on practice quilts, but I've never quilted feathers on a REAL quilt before, not to mention a client quilt.  Yikes!

I decided that the feathers would look best in the sashing and borders.

In the sashing I decided to do a more symmetrical feather.  I LOVE how these turned out.

In the outside border, I decided to do a more free flowing kind of feather with a curvy spine.  

These were really nerve-racking to quilt at first, but by the time I was finished, I was sad to be done with them!

I love how these turned out also.

It's so true that they really just do take practice to figure out how to shape them well.

I love the fabrics in this quilt.  They are so pretty, and they all go so well with each other.

I decided to quilt the background on the blocks pretty heavy, and I kept the rest of each block pretty simple.

In the backgrounds of the blocks I alternated between pebbling and and paisleys.

I did it to give variety to the quilt, but mostly because I couldn't decide which I liked better!

This star below is probably my favorite block, but it's really hard to decide!

Beautiful fabrics!

No, this star below is my favorite block.

Actually, never mind, I love them all!

I was only going to show a few blocks, but I decided to show them all, because they're all so pretty!

Her piecing is perfect!

Most of these pictures are from my iPhone, so they're not super, but they turned out better than my big camera for some reason.  I need to take a class to figure that thing out!

 I love the reds in this quilt.  It looks so pretty next to my burning bush and below my crabapple tree!

Karen always makes the backs of her quilts special too!  Look at this back!

 It's amazing, isn't it?  The quilting looks really awesome on the back too.

After I sent this off to Karen, she bound it up and sent me pictures of it all bound and finished.  

 

courtesy of K.K.

I think the red dot is the perfect finish for it!  I love a finished quilt!

courtesy of K.K.

 Karen, thank you for letting me quilt your amazing quilt!

A Dino Baby Quilt

 My sister-in-law Joanne was expecting her second grandchild last month, and she made this darling baby quilt for him.

I was so excited that she asked me to quilt it for her!

She chose the thread and the design and asked me to quilt it.  Pebbles in the smaller squares, and a big swirl in the larger squares.

She chose black minkee for the back.  The quilting shows up really well on it!

I love minkee for quilt backings!  It makes a quilt so soft and cuddly!  I've heard lots of people say that minkee is really hard to work with, and it can be (I've tried to bind a quilt with minkee, and I don't recommend it!!), but it's super simple to work with on a longarm!

I was so excited to quilt this for the newest little edition to our family!

Annalee's Quilt

I'm a bit behind on my quilts that I've finished and featured here on my blog!

My friend Annalee asked me to quilt this fun herringbone quilt about two months ago.

She asked me to quilt a wood grain pattern on it to match the wood grain fabric in the blocks and the border.

Ummm....I hadn't ever quilted wood grain before, so I needed to do some research to find out exactly how to do that!

Luckily, I found a few images and blog posts featuring this pattern, so I looked for a bit, taking some of those ideas and evolving it into my own style, practiced on paper for a few minutes, and then went for it!

It's just some organic lines with some knots and forks here and there.  It was such a fun pattern to quilt, and I think it turned out so awesome!

She had a brown chevron minkee for the back, which makes the quilt so thick and cuddly!

Thanks for letting me quilt this fun quilt, Annalee!

A Relay for Life Quilt

Well, I'm horrible at keeping up my blog, aren't I?  I have had the most noble intentions of publishing a blog post each and every Monday, but no.  

I was so positive that I would have so much extra time when my kids went back to school, but in fact I have less time than ever!

I suppose that's what happens when you're starting a business!  I'm not complaining at all, of course.  It's good to be busy!  

I just don't have time to blog.  I have plenty of content, just no time to put it on here!

I quilted this quilt at the beginning of the summer.  I was contacted by a representative of Relay for Life, and was asked if I would be willing to donate my time and quilt a raffle quilt for them. 

She asked me to just quilt something simple on it, so I opted for a loopy meander.

I love the center of the quilt..  This saying is so inspiring to me, and so true.  We only know what we can do until we're asked to do it.

I wanted to frame that saying a little bit to make it stand out.

This was one of the very first quilts that I put on my longarm after I bought it.

My daughter always has to put her shadow in one of the pictures when she helps me, silly girl!

Karen's Quilt

I had the privilege of quilting this beauty a couple of weeks ago.

Karen was kind enough to take a chance on a new quilter and sent me her AMAZING quilt.

 It is beautiful, isn't it?!

She gave me some initial ideas for the quilting, and then let me go from there.

I thought some wavy lines would create some movement, and some pebbling would be fun to offset the colored rays a little bit.

This quilt was so much fun to quilt!  Karen's piecing is perfect!  Every intersection is perfect.  I also love the fabric she used.  I need to ask her what they are!  The dots on the fabric are shimmery--so cool.

The back of her quilt is amazing as well!  I love all of the colorful pieces.

The quilting looks really amazing on the back!

You can see the shimmer of the fabrics in the picture above.  Love it!

 I love that she turned these blocks and put one full circle into the quilt.  It adds a lot of flair to the quilt!

She also pieced in a half-circle too, a little farther down the quilt.

I quilted it all freehand, except for the quilting in the ditch, which I used a ruler for.

 I used Superior Sew Fine #50 thread, which allowed me to quilt pretty heavily without it getting too thready.  The batting is Hobbs 80/20.

It rained almost non-stop for two weeks here, so we took most of these pictures up on our covered front porch.  I have to give credit to my daughter Megan that held the quilt up.  I don't understand why she thinks that taking a million pictures of a quilt that she has to hold up is crazy!

 Thank you, thank you, thank you Karen for letting me quilt your AMAZING quilt!  I love how it turned out!