Hedgerow Quilt

The Hedgerow Quilt from the Makower UK “Hedgerow Panel” and coordinating print is done! I used three different quilting techniques to complete it.

There is big stitch hand quilting using #8 Perle cotton around the animals in the blocks, straight line walking foot stitching in the Returning Birds pieced blocks, and free motion quilting in the sashing and in the animal blocks.

I did free-motion echo stitching around the leaves in the blocks. It gives the block almost a trapunto effect even though there isn’t a 2nd layer of batting and the batting I used isn’t thick and lofty. I really like it. There is a similar effect with the hand quilting around the animals. I also stitched along the stems of the flowers in the animal blocks.

There is a lot you really can’t see on this quilt. It’s almost like the hidden berries and other wonderful plants in a real hedgerow!

On the sashing blocks, there is a running vine pattern. And each of the solid blue blocks has a free motion plant that is similar to the plants printed on the Hedgerow panel blocks.

You can see what I’ve done a bit better on the back of the quilt, but even there, some of it is essentially hidden! But I know it’s there, and that’s what counts!

The royal blue stitching on the deep orange backing fabric really jolts your eye when you flip the quilt over. It reminded me of the color study posts I did in the past. You can see some of the color studies I did by clicking on the Color Studies Tab above or just by clicking this link.

"Snowflake" Quilt Completed

Spring has arrived and my version of Nicole Daksiewwicz’s quilt “Snowflake” is finally done!

Look back to my post of February 20, 2020, to see more about this quilt and how I pieced the background.

I used a walking foot to quilt it. Because of the varied block sizes in my background, there was a lot of stopping and restarting. I quilted along the seams of the blocks in the background but ran long lines of stitching through the white snowflakes. I followed the angles of the white blocks which created lots of intersecting lines. So the snowflake has lots of interest and texture.

It took me almost a week to quilt this lap quilt. I had lots of “are we done yet?” moments. But the end result was worth the tedium.

Quilting detail of snowflake. And yes, the diagonal lines are intentionally asymmetric.

So, it was a lovely warm March day when I took the photos shown. But I couldn’t resist adding a couple photos taken a few days later, the day I wrote this post! Gotta love Spring in New England!

“Snowflake” quilt on a snowy day!

And this one…just to be show it really is snowing!

This was a great project. But if I ever make it again, the background blocks will all be the same size to make the quilting easier.

This pattern and other patterns designed by Nicole Dakseiwicz, and be found at her website, Modern Handcraft.

Notice: This blog is not monetized: I do not use affiliate links. When there are links in a post, they are to give credit to another creative person, because I like or have used a product, or to help the reader easily find supplies for a project.

"Triple Barnstar" Quilt Completed

Done!
Here’s my “Triple Barnstar” quilt designed by Amy Gibson. The pattern is a star, in a star, in a star!

I did walking foot echo stitching around the stars, with sitch-in-the-ditch along the grid lines between the blocks. I never really pay close enough attention to really keep all the stitching in the ditch between the blocks. I much prefer stitching 1/8 to 1/4 inch away from seams where a little wobble isn’t as obvious!

Walking Foot Stitching and Stitch-in-the-Ditch (sort of!)

In open large triangles there are flowers without leaves and in the blocks without any piecing I did free motion flowers with 2 leaves. There is also a big of meandering and loops in the very large triangles near the center of the quilt.

So, this big project is finally done. And just in time—I heard something about possible snow in the coming week! It’s a perfect autumn quilt.

Charm Square Baby Quilt with Dogs and Bright Colors, "Dogs + Sunshine"

A fellow Boston Modern Guild member gave me this "Dog Park" fabric designed by Sarah Frederking for Studio E fabrics. She said as soon as she saw it, she thought of me!  How great is that!!

Another friend, who also loves dogs, is having a baby soon.  They don't know if it's a boy or a girl so for her baby quilt needs to be gender neutral.  As soon as I saw this dog fabric, I knew they'd love it!

I cut the charm squares (5 x 5 inches patches) to match the colors in the doggie feature fabric. The patches of "Dog Park" fabric are in diagonal pairs, randomly placed in the quilt top.  I love how bright and cheerful this quilt is!

The quilting is stitch-in-the-ditch with a walking foot across the entire grid of blocks. Then I added 3 sections of diagonal stitching and two more sections of vertical stitching running between the top and middle diagonals. The added quilting gives this simple quilt an interesting texture, more visible in the photos since it's already be washed.

I used the "Dog Park" fabric for the backing of the quilt.  This makes it a fun, reversible baby quilt!

The back of "Dogs + Sunshine" showing the "Dog Park" fabric

I can't wait to see what my friend thinks of this quilt I made for her baby!

"Dalmations in Diamonds" Quilt Completed

Here's my completed "Dalmations in Diamonds" quilt. 
All the quilting was done with a walking foot.  That took me nearly a week.  I have the time to do now that I'm only posting on the blog once a week!

I'm making good progress on another quilt using the focus fabric, using up the half square triangles (HST) from this quilt's flip-and-fold construction!  The new HST quilt has a more modern esthetic.

Here are some my other creative activities from the past week from the #40ddc2017 daily drawing challenge. 

With future surface designing for fabric in mind, I've been experimenting with digital drawing. Digital drawing requires learning a new set of skills. It's fun and has lots of potential. But I'm going to need to practice a lot for it to really be useful.

• Ink and colored pencil--Farmer Dog.  Prompt: Funny Creature
• Digital drawing--Dog in a Diamond.  Prompt: Diamonds
• Digital drawing--Cat on a mat. Prompt: Cat

Progress on Dalmations in Diamonds and other projects

I'm almost done quilting "Dalmations in Diamonds". I decided to quilt it with straight lines using a walking foot. It takes more time to do this kind of walking foot quilting. But I thought that using free motion quilting might distract from the design of the dog blocks.

The quilting pattern echoes the central square block, making a 90 degree turn across the block. Looks easy, but isn't. Even with the needle in the down position and checking to make sure the quilt relaxed and not pulling, I still get "peaks" sometimes at the corner.  I know that's due to the quilt moving with the first stitch after the turn. When my house got painted this summer, I took my quilting table set up down and never put it back. Looks like I really do need tables behind and to the left of the sewing table to support the quilt.

Here are some other projects I'm also been doing.  Left to right:

• I knit a sweater for a Bamboletta Cuddle Doll using the sweater pattern on Bamboletta's blog. It was snowing the afternoon I finished it. I took her outside to get a photo in natural light and ended up with a great snow angel shot!
• I've been participating in the 40 daily drawing challenge by I Still Matter. Daily prompts can be found on Instagram using the hashtag #40ddc2017. Here's a pen and a watercolor wash cyclamen for the prompt--"Flower".  Some days it just takes a few minutes. Sometimes it takes longer. And I'm still stumped by the prompt "pattern"!  Challenges like this get me to try things I might do on my own.
• I'm also doing Creativebug.com's new Creative Boot Camp hosted by Lisa Congdon.  One day the project was creating simple flowers with paper collage.  I used some origami paper I had on hand. Turns out that playing with scissors and glue is still a whole lot of fun!!

Quilting: Walking Foot vs. Free motion to create a wood grain effect

The quilt I've been working on this week has 9 fence posts in the design.  I've done wood grain before with a round knot.  But I saw a different intrepretation of wood grain in a quilting design in the book, Free-Motion Quilting for Beginners, and those who think they can't, by Molly Hanson.  So I decided to try her more oblong and pointy type of design.  

Wood grain quilting with a walking foot

I used the walking foot to quilt the first fence post of the day.  I figured that would work well with the long, slightly wavy lines of the wood grain.  With knot is so linear and pointed that looked feasible too.  It did work, but I had to stop and rotate the quilt around a number of times to create the knot effect.

Quilting a wood grain pattern with free-motion quilting

I realized that if I switched over to free-motion quilting, I could change the direction of my stitching, rather than rotating the whole quilt when I needed to fill in a tight space. This a fence post quilted with free-motion quilting. 

It was a lot easier to create the knots in the wood using free-motion quilting.  The free-motion knots are less pointy, a product of my brain and gross motor muscle memory, but I think I like them more.

I did rotate the quilt at either end of the fence posts when I was stitching the long wavy lines of wood grain. 

Both methods definitely work.  The the free-motion design which I stitched more spontanoesly was much easier and more fun to do.  

The bottom line: use the technique that works best for you and your skill level and that's the most fun!

Quilting straight lines

Finish It February is underway. I'm currently working on the royal blue flying geese lap quilt.  It's so modern, that quilting using straight lines using my walking foot felt like the best match for most of the quilt. Here are some photos of my quilting.

Echo stitching the "geese" in the flying geese blocks

I like to use painter's tape for straight line quilting over areas with negative space, especially if I am quilting diagonally. It's easy to apply, it stays in place and can be used several times before it gets too linty to stick well, and it doesn't leave a glue residue when removed.  The painter's tape in the photos is 1 inch wide. When I stitch, I keep the inner edge of my walking foot right at the edge of the painter's tape. It's easy to follow as I sew and it keeps me from sewing over the tape.  

If I have a stitch line that I want to follow but I want the distance between rows of stitching to be more than 1 inch, I use the metal guide bar on the walking foot.  The bar runs right over the line of stitches.  The line of stitching you get is only as good as the row of stitching you are following. Daydreaming isn't advised!

Using the guide bar on the walking foot

I used the wavy serpentine stitch on the blue and yellow strips in the quilt.  It's stitch #4 on my Bernina and I increase the length to 25 to get a wider wave and I use the walking foot.

This quilt is almost done.  I'm still thinking about how to quilt the small flying geese blocks. 

Quilt number two has top, backing and batting all set to sandwich!  Hopefully I'll get that done today. 

"Construction Zone": A modern twist on Bonnie Hunter's "Grand Illusion" 2014 Mystery Quilt

This week Boston had the largest January snow storm on record--24 1/2 inches. It was predicted well in advance.  "Snow Day!" I thought.  "I can sit inside and quilt and watch the snow accumulate outside."  That so did not happen!   I spent the snow day snow-blowing and shoveling.  And catching up with neighbors-- that's one of the great things about Big Snow in this city.  (My neighbor @franklin.e, an artist at work at home during the storm, did a watercolor of me shoveling show. It's on IG at #snowdraw.  How cool is that)!!

I did find some time yesterday to finish up my Modern take on Bonnie Hunter's "Grand Illusion" 2014 Winter Mystery quilt.  It was made from the orphan blocks I had left over after I decided to make the quilt twin size instead of queen size. 

This morning I went out and shoveled around the fence in the backyard so I could take some photos to share with you. Then I went out front and put the quilt on a sunny snow drift in the front yard to get the photos of the quilting.  That's why the photos are a bit ripply!

Shoveled out for photos!

This modern quilt is a snapshot of the assembly of the "Grand Illusion" quilt. (Click the link to see my completed "Grand Illusion" quilt top).   Top to bottom:  Outer border, inner border, "exploded block" on the left, block components on center right, blocks falling off the sewing table bottom left and completed block on the bottom right.

Here are some pictures of the quilting. I used my walking foot for the geometric/straight quilting and did free motion quilting for the flowers and vine.  I used the serpentine stitch (#4 on my Bernina) to create the motion of the blocks falling off the table onto the floor. 

And here is the back.  The backing fabric wasn't wide enough so I added some the left over border strips.

"Construction Zone" Back

Now, time to tackle quilting my real "Grand Illusion" quilt!!

Baby Quilt in a Weekend #2: "Giraffe Party!"

Happy New Year's!  Here's a baby quilt pattern to welcome in 2015. 

We've all had this happen...we need a baby quilt and we need it yesterday!   Here is the 2nd in a series of Baby Quilts in a Weekend.  With a bit of diligence, this quilt can be completed in just 2 days.  The dishes may not get washed but the quilt will be finished and ready to wrap! 

I've had this the giraffe fabric in my stash for several years.  I found it on a excursion to Keepsake Quilting, long before grey had become a hot color for baby's rooms.  The fabric was so unique.  I knew that it would make a cute baby quilt for the right family some day. 

Because there are giraffes in the focus fabric, I wanted everything about the quilt to be T-A-L-L!  The blocks are tall and the quilting design is vertical.

The quilt blocks are simple rectangles with a 2 1/2 inch strip of Kona cotton used as an accent color.

Block of the focus fabric with the strip of accent fabric, ready for sewing

The colored strips are on opposite sides of the focus fabric in each horizontal row.  Row 1 has the strips on the right, Row 2 has them on the left.  There are 5 rows in the quilt, so there are an uneven number of right and left blocks.

The mother of the baby receiving this quilt loves celebrations. I had some fabric with tiny peach and grey pennants which matched the focus fabric. I added to to the top of one block in each row of the quilt.  They are the reason why this quilt is named "Giraffe Party"!    
 

While I love the strips with the pennants on individual blocks, and while I really did want them in this quilt, I won't use them when I make this pattern again.  I think the white strips running down the quilt in a stair-step pattern detracts from the verticality of the quilt's design.  I think the quilt is a lot more interesting in use than it is hanging up for a photograph.

Giraffe Party!  40 x 50 inches

I did part of the quilting with my walking foot and part by free motion quilting. All the quilting is vertical, running from top to bottom of the quilt. 

My cat, Chester, had had surgery the week I was working on this quilt. He came to sit beside me on my chair while I was doing the quilting. It's always a tight fit when he does this, but even tighter due to the Elizabethan Collar he was wearing. (The collar kept him from reaching, and removing the stitches at the surgical site).   At one point he must have leaned forward bumped one of the stitch choice buttons on the front of my machine.  I was quite surprised when I reached the end of my row and realized that Chester had made a design change (a hemming stitch) without my permission!  I got a good chuckle about his creativity and then did a bit of un-sewing!

The basic quilting is straight lines with varying numbers of parallel lines and varying distance between some of the adjacent lines.  I chose to do a vine and leaf free motion design through the center of the blocks of focus fabric, seen in the photo at the top of this post. When you flip the quilt over to the back, it looks like a whole cloth quilt design. It's really beautiful, making this quilt truly reversible. 

Quilting on the back of the quilt

To make this quilt:

Yardage:

• Focus fabric: 1 1/2 yards
• Assorted solid color strips: 25 strips 2 1/2 inches x 10 1/2 inches (3/4 yard if the solid color strips are to be all the same color)
• Binding:  1/2 yard
• Backing: 1 3/4 yards
• 1 crib size quilt batting  45 x 60 inches

Instructions:

1. Cut 25 blocks 6 1/2 inches wide x 10 1/2 inches long from the focus fabric
2. Sew a 2 1/2 inch x 10 1/2 inch strip of the solid color fabric to the RIGHT side of 15 of the focus fabric rectangles
3. Sew a 2 1/2 inch x 10 1/2 inch strip of the solid color fabrics to the LEFT side of the remaining 10 focus fabric rectangles.
4. Sew the quilt together in horizontal rows--5 blocks to each row, starting with blocks with the colored strip on the RIGHT side of the block.  In row 2 the colored strips will be on the LEFT side of the block.
5. Sew the 5 completed rows together to finish the quilt top.
6. Sandwich the quilt top, quilt batting and backing fabric and quilt as desired. 
7. Cut 5  strips of the binding fabric,  2 1/2 inches x Width of fabric (40 inches).  Sew strips together to make the binding. Fold the binding in half across the 2 1/2 width and press.  Attach binding to your quilt. 
8. Add a label!  You're done!

African Village Quilt--Completed.

Here's my completed African Village Quilt.  It measures 40 x 57 inches. 

African Village Quilt

I recently took Jacquie Gering's Craftsy course, "Creative Quilting with your Walking Foot."  She had some great tips and suggestions about using the walking foot for quilting.  I used echoing in, radiating designs and straight quilting using a variety of specialty stitches on my domestic sewing machine. It was lots of fun to use her techniques.  

The echoing in stitching is in the setting triangles in the upper strip of diamonds. 

Here is a detail of radiating quilting on a roof. 

Radiating quilting done with walking foot on the hut roof,  Free motion quilting used to create grasses and heat swirls. 

I used Jacquie's suggestion of using the Bernina specialty stitch #4, the serpentine stitch, to make the current in the river blocks. She said that this stitch is intended for use in garment construction making lingerie which needs to stretch!  Doesn't it make a lovely river current?

Bernina Stitch #4 to make the waves in the river blocks.  Free motion quilting to make the stream pebbles and swirls around the women.

I also used the serpentine stitch to make the smoke coming out of the chimney in the central hut. 

Central hut showing serpentine stitch for smoke.  Also note the straight stitching done on the focus fabric blocks adjacent to the block and on the hut walls.

There are also lots of straight stitching using the walking foot throughout the quilting. 

Straight stitching with the walking foot and 2 decorative stitches in the outer quilt border.

You'll also see free motion quilting on this quilt.  I used it to make heat currents, pebbles and grasses and other vegetation. 

This quilt was a lot of fun to make and to quilt.  

Note 2021: For those of you returning to the post, the free pattern no longer is available. I wrote it so long along that the files weren’t intact and no longer secure.

Thanks to everyone who did use the old pattern to make a quilt! I hope you enjoyed the process.