Flowers Around My Cabin - Raffle Quilt for 2017

I finally completed the quilt I've been working on for months.  It's for my guild chapter's 2017 raffle (Foothills Quilters).

I'm so grateful that I was able to pass this off on Thanksgiving morning to the lady who is sewing on the binding. 

Back Story:  I quilted the quilt with an all-over feather meander in the center, small feathers in the red border, and outlined the applique, and then meandered around it.  I quilted this in mostly 2 hour stretches while my 2 1/2 year old great grandson was napping (on the days I wasn't so tired from chasing him around that I had to nap right along with him).

The ladies in Foothills made log cabin blocks for a quilt we donated to our meeting place.  I took the left-over blocks to make this raffle quilt (think left-overs = many blocks not true to size).  As you might guess, when asking for 12 1/2" blocks that will be 12" when finished, sometimes you get 12" blocks before they're finished.  That meant I needed to remake a dozen of the blocks to make them fit together.  We chose this star layout which I think is kind of unique and striking. 

I then gave a class on appliqueing an easy way (glue method), made kits for the ladies, and passed as many out as I could find takers.  After I collected them I made the ones that were missing for the layout I designed, and sewed them onto the borders.  Sewing them on took about 73 hours.  I missed a few session of keeping track so this number is conservative. 

Then I proceeded to figure out a design for the quilting and did some marking of the top.  Loading also took some thought because of the pieced backing, so I'm pleased that that turned out okay.  A lady in our group made the pieced back using several of the smallest blocks and I appliqued some flowers and leaves on it after I completed the quilting.

I decided on Dream Wool batting because the feather meander has some rather long feathers in some places and Dream batting can be quilted farther apart than what I had originally planned to use (Hobbs 80/20).  This quilt feels cuddly already with the wool batting in it.

After I completed the quilting, I realized it would need a hanging sleeve so we could display it on our quilt rack for the raffle.  So made that and a label that included laundering instructions. 

I was so pleased to hand it off just before noon on Thanksgiving.  Yea!

Here are some close-ups of the quilting and the back of the quilt:

Quilting Ladies that I Quilted for a Friend

I occasionally do custom quilting for others, not as a business, but just for fun.  Here is a quilt of cute quilting ladies I did for a friend from my Palo Verde Patchers' quilting group. 

I did a meander around the quilting ladies.

There's a feathered wreath in the large 4-patch blocks.

This is the inner border design.

A feathered outer border.

 

I was very slow finishing this quilt.  This poor lady had to wait for quite some time for her quilt.  I'm finally starting to feel better though, I've had quite a bad fibro flare, and it's kept me out of my sewing room for several months.  I don't do quilt show quality quilts - I just quilt for fun from time to time.  I'm pleased to have this one finished. 

Noah's Ark Wall Hanging

I've completed the Noah's Ark wall hanging for Bobbi that I mentioned at the end of last month. It was started by a friend of ours who recently passed away. It was nearly completed - all I had to do were the leaves on the sides and top and the berries - the leaves on the bottom and the apples were already done by Marty, as were all of the animals and the ark. Bobbi helped find new homes for some of the unfinished work. I'm the happy recipient of a few items and will post them as I'm working on them or as they're finished. So here is the first one - the Noah's Ark wall hanging. Isn't it cute!

Pumpkin Wall Hanging for Judy

This is a comfort quilt/wall hanging I made for Judy.  Her favorite season is fall so I hope she'll like the pumpkin.  This is my first attempt at hand quilting a quilt.  I took a class at Foothills last year and finally decided to give it a try.  I really enjoyed it so may do some other small pieces in the future.

Embroidered House Quilt Quilted for Joy

The other custom quilt I finished in April was a cute embroidered house quilt for Joy.  This quilt has feathered wreaths, feathered swags, and a meandering feathered border.  It's a little bit hard to see because of the dark fabric.  She was thrilled with how it turned out. 

Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilted for Darlene

I quilted this colorful Grandmother's Flower Garden for Darlene.  I decided to put a feathered wreath in the blocks.  When I took it to her at our Foothills Meething in April she showed it to the other gals.  They seemed to like the quilting and said that the wreaths made it look like the blocks were spinning. 

Here's a close-up of the quilting.  Darlene wanted light gray thread which worked pretty well except I thought blue might have been better in the bright blue "sashing".  She gave me a white backing so she preferred the gray thread.  All in all, I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Comfort Quilt for Bobbi

When we found out that our Foothills President had been diagnosed with cancer we decided we wanted to make her a comfort quilt. Our members donated "hugs" blocks and I had the honor of making them into a quilt.

With the number of blocks submitted I decided I could make a quilt of 6 blocks across and 9 blocks down without leaving any blocks out.  Well almost anyway - I was 4 blocks short.  So I decided to make a center block to make it work.  Since we're quilters, I decided on a little embroidered quilter girl, who was embroidering the word "hugs".

Next I thought about what could work for the borders.  I found a picture of a quilt with an applique border that I thought she'd like.  I made the wimsical flowers in the bright fabrics that she prefers. Then I thought that I really didn't want a full border of flowers because I wanted to leave some open space for qulting some feathers for her.  Lots of planning and decisions later, here's the finished quilt and some close-ups of the flowers, the center, and the quilted feathers.

 

It's Finished - Joy's Rabbit Quilt

Woohoo, I finished Joy's quilt late Friday night.  I'm happy with how it turned out.  It took me a little over 39 hours to quilt it on my longarm.  I tried some things I hadn't before, such as echo quilting around applique and free- hand stitch-in-the-ditch on the borders.  And they both worked.  Yeah!  I enjoyed quilting this one and once I got going, I didn't even hold my breath while I was working (grin).  The "jittery nerves" thing usually gets to me but this time it was okay.  Wonder if I'm finally acclimating to longarm quilting. 

Here's a picture of the finished quilt:

Joy's Rabbit Quilt

I'm in the process of quilting Joy's darling Rabbit quilt.  It's been waiting patiently while I've been down with an inner ear infection and positional vertigo.  It's been an awful several months without being able to quilt.  I've been so dizzy and my eyes have also been bouncy so couldn't even read.  I finally got back into my sewing room last week.  Yeah!  Here's a picture of Joy's cute quilt in process.

Today I'm outlining the applique and echo quilting around it.  I'm also doing a small stippling around the baskets.  I'm having fun with this one and, thankfully, it's going well.