Our neighbors were recently blessed with a gorgeous baby boy, and the good news sent me to my sewing machine. I used fabric from my stash along with some blue Kona cotton to make this quilt for baby Bentley.
I decided to just do cross-hatch quilting (evenly spaced diagonal lines in two directions) on this quilt ,and it only took me about an hour using my supermachine. It actually took longer to bind it, which I did by hand while watching Downton Abbey.
Recently my eldest daughter celebrated her birthday. I thought the day should be marked with a quilt, specifically one using fabric by her favorite designer, Lotta Jansdotter.
I bought a jelly roll of Jansdotter’s fabric line, Follie, with the intention of making a Jelly Roll Race quilt (they’re so much fun). But then I found another pattern online that I liked better. The quilt top went together quickly because jelly rolls are so easy to work with.
Free-motion quilting the quilt was a little daunting. I couldn’t think of how to quilt it, and I didn’t want it to look like my usual quilts with lots of curves and flowers. After taking some time to think about it, I realized that merely echoing the designs in the fabric would make the back echo the front. I enjoyed just following the lines instead of having to think about the designs I was quilting.
I’m happy that my daughter seemed pleased with her quilt. I really enjoyed making it for her!
I finally finished this table runner, which was a kit I bought from Connecting Threads. It includes small triangles and rectangles cut from fabric that raveled easily, so it was somewhat frustrating to assemble. I wasn’t sure it was going to turn out very well, either. But once I quilted it on my supermachine, it came to life and I’m very happy with it. Flowers sent to me by a dear friend really set it off.
This is the first time I came up with my own design for each block. I don’t enjoy marking quilts, so the designs have to be something I can repeat using only the blocks as a guide. Once I knew what I wanted to do, it was easy.
I was at the Quilt Expo last year when I saw a charm pack that I just had to have. The fabric collection is called “Weeds,” which doesn’t sound very attractive but it caught my eye, so I bought three charm packs and decided it would make a great quilt.
But I couldn’t bring myself to cut up those cute little squares, so I decided to let each square be a block. It was easily pieced; the hard part was deciding how to quilt it.
I chose to quilt each of the 120 blocks in whatever way I wanted to quilt it. I tried not to think too hard and just let myself do it. This sounds easy but it took some getting used to as I prefer to have a plan. Now that the quilt is finished, I realize just how much fun it is to let yourself quilt in whatever way you want without too much thinking or planning.
I free-motion quilted my “Weeds” quilt on my Brother PQ1500S High Speed Quilting and Sewing Machine using Aurifil Quilting Thread.
This quilt might also be called the “Never Too Late” quilt, because I made the top about 13 or 14 years ago, when I was still homeschooling, then carried it from house to house during our various moves before finally machine-quilting it this past winter.
“Daisy Days” was one of many Thimbleberries fabric lines (which are no longer produced). I bought this as a kit after seeing it hanging on the wall in a wonderful quilt shop called “A Touch of Amish” in Barrington, IL, and I had to have it. Who knew it would take me so long to finish it? But given how busy I was when I was homeschooling my kids, I’m amazed I even got the top made when I did.
As for the machine quilting, I did it in alternating rows of daisies and leaves, which I learned how to do at Lori Kennedy’s fantastic blog.