Barbara's Quilt Finished

A little late to sharing, but yay!  Barbara's quilt is finished and by now should have made its way home.  :)  I had so much fun quilting this - and I know I say that frequently but I really do love my job, and I really DO enjoy quilting quilt tops up for folks!

Barbara had been concerned that her top might be too plain for fancy quilting - I'm so glad she decided to send it along despite that concern.  The truth is, for most of us machine quilters who do a lot of custom work, the simply pieced tops are our FAVORITE.  The ones that have a lot of negative space give us the most opportunity for creativity.

Barbara sent along a few photos of quilting she had see online and requested something with a similar feeling.  I can at times recreate quilting, but often times it works best for me to see a photograph of what you like and then create something new and fresh but with a similar feeling or style.  So that is what we did here.  Because the photo she sent was a tad difficult to draw directly on I opted to recreate her blocks and share with her my ideas for each section of the quilt.

 

I almost always ask for the tiniest bit of creative freedom even when a mock up is approved.  Just like any plan, sometimes ideas look better on paper than in reality.  Or, what happens more often with my work, is that I think up little details to improve on a design as I'm working.  Sometimes those little gems are what really set that quilting design off.

Barbara requested two layers of my Hobbs 80/20 batting.  For most show quilts I like to use wool layered over Hobbs, but I find that 80/20 in double layers quilts up very nice too.  Wool is slightly lighter and has a filling quality that 80/20 doesn't.

I used Glide in the top and Bottom Line in the bobbin.  I do love this combination for appropriate quilts.  As a general rule I prefer a fine top thread for dense quilting - but this quilt in particular has dense and medium/light areas of quilting and I wanted the heavier thread to compensate in those areas with less quilting to give it a more even feeling.

All in all I am very please with how this one turned out!  I think I always spot a few things with each quilt that I will do slightly different on the next...but I still think it turned out quite drool worthy!  :)

A Little More Progress - Barbara's Quilt

I can hear thunder off in the distance - it sure is feeling like spring now!  Time to break and listen to the storm...

I'm just about finished with this border - getting late so I will finish it up tomorrow.  Hoping to get the next section of this border done in a day or two as it's mostly straight lines.  This quilt is a little bit slow going but as more quilting is added it becomes even more spectacular...  :)

Vickie's Sew Spooky Quilt - In Progress

Oh my - I have really been slacking on my blogs lately!  It's been quite busy here.  Busy in a wonderful way for the most part - I love having quilts to work on.  Though, a few days ago, not one - not two - but all three of my daughters came down with the flu on the same day all within about an hour of each other!  In some ways I'm grateful it was all at once rather than each going down like flies throughout the week.  I had to forgo a few days of quilting, but I'm playing catch up over the weekend.

Here are a few shots of Vickie's quilt - it is called Sew Spooky by The Quilt Company.  Vickie did an amazing job piecing this quilt - it is all needle turned applique and the stitches are darn near invisible.  Everything is very square and accurate - which makes things that much easier when quilting.  :)

Planning on quilting through the weekend, barring that I don't catch the yicks from the girls.  *Fingers crossed!* 

If you can believe it, because I hardly can, my 33rd birthday is coming up in a week.  Where has this year gone?

Happy Quilting!

- Valerie :)

Almost at the Half Way Point

I am almost at the half way point on this quilt - OH MY GOODNESS!!  I cannot wait to be finished.  I have half a dozen more ideas floating in my head and I have quilts coming in soon!!!  Tomorrow is our second Christmas with my Husbands family...a day of play...then after that I have to buckle down because that only gives me one more week to finish the quilting on this.

I have been getting a lot of questions about what batting or what thread I'm using.  This is Glide thread on the top and in the bobbin - the cream fabric is mainley natural muslin - meaning there are natural imperfections in the fabric.  I like the look personally - and I like even more the idea of an elegant design over what is normally thought of as an inexpensive utilitarian fabric.  I love love love Glide thread because it tends to quilt up somewhere between a very fine thread and a thicker polyester thread...it's perfect for sort of, all purpose quilting.  You can do a lot of dense quilting without a terrible amount of thread build up or you can do really simple designs and they look very elegant and fancy with Glide's bit of shine.  I wind my own bobbins and have yet to use the magna bobbins but I hear great things about them!  I also like that Glide comes off the cone really smoothly.  I have only had one cone out of the forty or more that I've purchased from them that I had to use a thread net over.  (The price is right too - and they have one all across the board price...so I pay the same for the thread as you!  I am not affiliated - just a fan!)

I am using two layers of batting - and I prefer two layers of a lower loft batting to one layer of high loft batting.  It just gives a better more fuller look in my opinion.  Dare I say I even like the look of a "faux" trapunto look with two layers of batting and dense quilting versus real machine trapunto over top another layer or two layers of batt.  Or maybe I'm just lazy and would rather quilt the crumbs out of my quilt instead of cut away batting...  LOL!  :)

The top batting is Hobbs Tuscany Wool - I have never used this brand of wool before this quilt and I have never made a quilt this size with wool, but I do like Hobbs 80/20 quite a lot and they are very consistent so I thought it would be a good wool to start with.  I do love the fullness and the loft...but I don't like the memory retention and the sort of looseness of the batting.  When on the frame I like to poke the sides of my quilt where there is no top with pins while I am adjusting things and wool doesn't make a very good pincusion!  :)

The bottom layer is an off brand equivalent to Warm and Natural.  I have no real strong feelings about Warm and Natural either way other than to say that Warm and White tends to beard and beard bright white through my fabric so I rarely if ever use it anymore.  I honestly don't care for cotton either because I'm a machine quilter - I feel like poly and poly blends show off the quilting better and I like even more that poly batts tend to retain fold lines less.  I do however really like the look of these two batts together (wool and cotton) - though in the future to get more bang on the back I will probably layer wool with Hobbs 80/20.  Hobbs and Quilter's Dream have been my two favorite battings so far...and both are pretty economically priced.

Alright, happy sewing!  Hopefully I'll be DONE next time you hear from me!!!  :)