Quilt 122: Kaffe Classic Purple and Teal - DONE!

I love charm squares - and found this "Kaffe Classic" set from Rowan online.  The photo on the website where I ordered the fabric showed squares of purple, blue, teal, and greens.  I thought: "gorgeous"!

But - when I opened the charm pack, in with the lovely flower and polka dot prints, were some pretty wild ones that simply didn't marry well with the flowers and dots. There were quite a few of these:

I'm afraid my camera isn't doing well with the colours here, just trust me: They didn't match the other colours at all.  So I pulled them out and set them aside.

I arranged what was left:

 And inserted a 2/5" lattice and a healthy sized border on the left and right.  And here's the finished quilt!

48" x 66" - quilted on the longarm (Q-Matic "Bellflower2" design) - cotton batting

For the quiltinig, I chose the Q-Matic pattern "Bellflower2".  It's a fairly small, dense stitching pattern (if you don't resize it to a larger size, which I didn't).  With the quilt being the size it is, and the dense stitching, the Q-Matic gave me fits.  Apparently there is a definite limit to the number of total stitches it can handle.  So I had a fairly dense stitching pattern, a pretty good sized quilt, and also had the audacity to select 12 stitches to the inch.  I managed to get it done, but oh heavens!  I pretty much had to stitch one end-to-end row, stop and do a complete reboot of the system, then set up the quilt again each time I had another row to complete.  It drove me nuts.

After wrestling with it for several hours and observing the system's behaviour, it became apparent that the "realign safe area" function is where the problem is.  I don't know why the system doesn't just give you an error message.  Seems to me it should, but there you are.

Anyway, I managed to slug my way through.

I used a variegated thread with blues and purples.  Here's a closeup of the stitching which shows how the thread shows up on the solid border:

And here's the backing and a closeup of the top.  Each of the squares on the top are 4.5" - so yeah, a lot of stitching on this quilt!

As you can see, I bound it in a very deep purple fabric - to help pull up the darker purples in the top.

This project did give me some headaches, but the results are lovely (I do wish my camera captured colours better...).

Quilt 121: Minnie Mouse 1 - DONE!

A friend requested a "Minnie Mouse" themed quilt.  I found a great panel online - which is in the center of this quilt:

54" x 62" - quilted on the longarm (Q-Matic pattern "Panto_Stars") - cotton batting

The panel is in the center.  I added a narrow black border, a wider border using a coordinating print, and a 3rd border (black) on the outside.  The binding is done in red.

Here's the stitch pattern I selected.

And here's a closeup of the backing, binding and you can see how the stitch pattern fits into the quilt.  I used red thread, which pretty much fades into the background.

 This one is a fairly big quilt - but I have another Minne Mouse panel and will be doing a baby-sized one."

Quilt 120: Baby Australian Animals - DONE!

There was a sale at Patchwork With Gail B - and they had an adorable quilt kit marked down.  I couldn't resist.  Here's the top, after piecing.  There's a center planel with baby Australian animals shown, and the borders are an adorable coordinating print.  In the corners, the original design calls for some of the coordinating print to be cut out and applique'd - but I felt that was too busy.  Instead I decided to insert a fancy-stitch design of my own.

 I had a length of bright green that I wanted to use for the backing.  It's not an exact match to the greens on the top, however.

 But binding the quilt with this pink swirly leftover fabric would create enough separation between the back and front- and the pink goes great with both!

 I mentioned wanting to do a fancy design in the corners with stitching (instead of applique).  I found this image online - a cluster of gum leaves.  I used the Art-n-Stitch software that came with the Q-Matic to trace the leaves and make a stitching pattern I could execute on the longarm.

And here's my test of the design using scraps.  It turned out great!

The animals in the center panel are really cute.  I didn't want to do end-to-end quilting on this quilt, but opted instead to outline the animals and add a little bit of interest to the backgrounds inside the frames.

 And here you see on the finished quilt how that turned out!

The finished quilt!  Doubleclick the image below for a larger picture.  In this photo you can see the gumleaves in the corners (especially lower left)

44" x 52" - quilted on the longarm (freemotion, ruler work, Q-Matic gum leaves) cotton batting

My friend Sarah just became a grandmother for the first time recently.  She saw this quilt and fell in love with it - so it's going to be her gift to her granddaughter.

Quilt 119: Nell's Flower Shop - DONE!

This quilt is a kit from "Patchwork with Gail B".  I've been in love with this design for years and finally broke down and bought the kit.  It looks so elaborate, but is actually so simple!

You start with 2 packs of charm squares:

Doubleclick any photo on this page to see a larger image

And here's the finished quilt.  Basically, all you do is cut the charm squares into into 2/5" squares, then sew them around blocks of a coordinating (and lighter) fabric.  Tack on borders, and you're there!

I was so surprised at how fast this went.

63" x 63" - quilted with the Q-Matic ("Aloha Petite_PRPANTO10" quilt design) - cotton batting

Here's the quilting pattern I selected from the library that came with the Q-Matic.  I used tan thread, which beautifully disappears into the prints.

For the backing, I managed to get a few meters of fabric on sale that happened to be part of the same Moda line.  A bargain!

I loved making this quilt and I have quite a few charm square packs that I ordered online and will really work with this design.

You're going to see a lot more of these (in different prints, of course!).