Star Wars Quilt

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Barb

There are a couple of Star Wars fans in our family, and they happen to be married to each other, so it wasn’t hard to come up with the idea of a Star Wars quilt as their Christmas gift.

The pattern was one I first saw in McCall’s Quilting magazine. The fabric was made by Camelot Fabrics which I bought from the Missouri Star Quilt Co. As you can see, most of the quilt was done in a meandering stitch:

However, I didn’t want to stitch over the faces of the characters, which featured in a couple of the fabrics:

So I looped around the faces instead, creating the squares you see on the back:

As with my previous quilt, I used Aurifil thread for all the piecing and quilting, and the backing is made of premium 108″ muslin from JoAnn Fabrics, probably the nicest cloth they sell there these days. The batting is also from JoAnn; it’s Pellon’s Nature’s Touch 100% cotton batting. I free-motion quilted it using my supermachine, the Brother PQ-1500S.

A Birthday Quilt

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Barb

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!

Quilted Table Runner

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Barb

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.

“Weeds” Quilt

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Barb

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.