Tutorial - How I Worked around Embellishments and 3D Flowers

How I Worked Around Embellishments

This quilt gave me some challenges to figure out how to work around them on a longarm, with design elements and lots of embellishments.

This is how the quilt top came to me, with prairie points and a small border outside it.

There were also lots of fun embellishments, like flaps, 3-D ribbon flowers and leaves, appliqué, and embroidery.

As always, I lined up the "top" (which is really the side since I loaded it sideways).

I used my horizontal and vertical channel locks to insure it was straight, then used my cord and toggles to mark where the edges were to come to, as well as specific vertical lines. This helps me each time I roll the quilt to keep everything straight.

I did an overall meandering loops design, simple and forgiving. I wanted all her work to shine and didn't want anything to overshadow it.

As I would quilt, I would move the 3D pieces out of the way to cover as much space, but not sew over the embellishments.

Basting down the sides was tricky. It was important to keep the little border underneath straight, but when the prairie points were bent out of the way, the edge would immediately shift.

 I found pinning the points out of the way, and careful measuring and pinning helped immensely.

Again, pinning the prairie points out of the way, I bound the quilt as I normally would.

And it's finished.

A closer view, above. 

A pieced back using leftover fabrics from her stash, below.

Chevron Quilt Made With Laura Gunn's Garden Wall Collection Fabric

Chevron quilt I made and quilted to death using Glide and Glide 60 Mocha thread. I have to keep this one.

Backstory: Many long years ago, my friend, Laura Gunn, had a new quilting line of fabric coming out called Painters Canvas (2013) and she asked me to make her a quilt using it. Together we designed the pattern and she selected each color to match an afghan her grandma made. See it here.

In payment, she gave me a stack of fabric from a different line, the "Garden Wall Collection" that she had designed. It’s beautiful fabric, but orange has never been a prominent part of my color wheel. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with it.

A few years later, as I was making as many practice tops as I could in preparation for getting my longarm, I ran across a pattern for a chevron quilt that had another quilt to make from the scraps. (That quilt has a story, too, but that will be another time.)

After making the two quilts, I used up the leftover fabric in the borders and backs.

 

Jada's Quilt in Aqua, Black, White, Gray

My niece, Jada, made this beauty. I absolutely love her color choice!

With some 80/20 batting and plush minky fabric on the back, this will be so cuddly and warm. The threads I quilted it with were sterling Glide on top and dark gray Bottom Line on the back using a free motion C-curls design. Love it!

Evidently I played bobbin chicken on this. When i was done, there was only about 5” left.

 

Stained Glass Sunlit Bird Panel Quilt

I recently finished this quilt top and I love it! I was in Nauvoo, IL at the end of May and for some unknown reason I ended up stopping by the little quilt shop (Nauvoo Emporium Quilts & More). They had a quilt kit using this stained glass bird panel. It was pretty, but I like to design my own and make it the size I want, so I bought the panel and the kaleidoscope fabrics and began planning while touring the town and sitting at my campsite. I ordered some more fabrics from my favorite online store to do the seminole border, and basically spent way too much on this, but I love it. Now I need to decide how I want to quilt it.

You know, since I already have all the extra fabric I ordered, I think I'll buy a couple more of these panels and make a baby/queen set for another future grandchild. Below is the original quilt I saw in the store that triggered my creative juices.

Rainbow/Spectrum Scrappy Plaidy-Cake Queen and Baby/Lap Quilt Tops

You know when you have a long to-do list and you work and work on it for days or weeks or months with seemingly nothing to show for it and then finish multiple projects back to back? Well, that was last week. I finished this quilt top set for a future grandchild (small when a baby, and larger when they are older). I’m replenishing my stock.

This quilt pattern is called Plaidy Cake, but of course I tweaked it to be the size and color scheme I wanted. I have always loved the spectrum and how colors can flow from one to another, so rather than do the patten entirely random, as directed, I wanted to be all matchy-matchy which ended up harder than I thought. But I like the result, so it was worth it to me.