Two Jinny Beyer's Garden Maze Quilts - Custom Quilting

The first quilt (Joan's).

Three quilting friends, who happened to be cousins, bought matching Jinny Beyer Garden Maze quilt kits to make together. Phyllis finished hers several years ago. Patty and Joan were almost finished with theirs when progress was stopped by several family members passing away, including Patty. 

Now, years later, Phyllis has finished Patty's (all that was left to do was sew the outer border on it), and Joan has finished hers.

Since Phyllis' was already quilted, and they wanted Patty's and Joan's quilts done the same way, but the longarm quilter who quilted Phyllis' quilt was no longer around to do it.

They found my name at a local quilt shop and contacted me to do it. I, of course, was more than happy to do so.

They brought me Phyllis' quilt so that I could duplicate the quilting on the other two quilts.

Each flower is stitched around with the feathers and fill in the black.

My threads were not exactly the same as the original, but I think it worked out equally well, and I didn't have to change threads on the back as the first quilter did.

In the sashing, there is straight line stitching the black, elongated hexagon, echo stitching around that hexagon, as well as stitching down each side of the the stripes in the center area.

Here's a look at the borders, quilted in black thread. 

All the stitch-in-the-ditch (SID) work took longer than doing all the feathers in the blocks, borders and triangle pieces. So when someone says they just want something easy, like SID, know that that is not as easy on a machine as it is while hand quilting. No one's straight lines in piecing are perfectly straight. Therefore, when using a perfectly straight ruler and trying to duplicate the not quite straight lines, it ends up looking like the quilting is not straight instead of the piecing, thus giving the LAQ (longarm quilter) more work to make it look right.

And the second quilt (Patty's). Because of the direction of the sun, the colors seem washed out in the photos. They aren't in real life - washed out, that is. They are bright and vibrant on a black background.

Comparison of the one I was copying and the second one I did. My quilting is on the left in each of the following pictures and the one I was duplicating is on the right.

Here you might see that my threads were a medium gray and a black on top with a dark gray thread on the back. The original had a tan and dark gray on the front with the same colors on the back. 

The original (Phyllis's).