Quilt 127: Australian Souvenier Quilt - DONE!

At the beginning of last year, I made quilt using a jelly roll that had rainbow colours and some interesting prints.  It turned out very well and I thought I'd like to do another.  Well - then there was a sale at Patchwork with Gail B and wouldn't you know they had those jelly rolls marked down!  I grabbed one in a hurry!

Then, in November, my friend Diane and her 13 year old daughter Allison visited us here in Melbourne for a week.  While they were here, I showed photos of that rainbow quilt to Diane and asked her if she thought Allison would like to have one.  She said "yes!"  So I got that jelly roll out and whipped up one for her.

Here it is:

47" x 76" - quilted on the Bernina Q-Matic ("Panto_Square Meander" stitch design, end-to-end) - bamboo batting

The thing about this jelly roll that made me think it would be a nice quilt for Allison is that some strips in the set have names of places in Australia, including Melbourne.  Here's a closeup so you can see the print:

I used a soft mint-on-white print for the backing and bound it with white homespun.

Here's the quilting design I selected from the Q-Matic library:

That quilting design is a great one, very versatile, and I've used it on several quilts now.

I actually finished the quilt at the beginning of last month and posted it to Allison on December 5.

Quilt 118: 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 112: "Baby Koala" Panel Quilt - DONE!

Now that I've worked out how to use the Q-Matic for end-to-end "pantograph" quilting, I'm really having a ball - and getting quilts done faster and faster!

I found an adorable Koala panel online a few months ago - and ordered it and a coordinating print (blue, green and grey leaves) for a border.  Adding a little bright solid green from my stash of leftover fabrics ersulted in a quilt that took very little time to put together.

I decided to experiment with the quilt design on this one, and chose "Panto_Square Meander" from the library of end-to-end designs in the Q-Matic.  Here's a photo taken just after I started stitching. As you can see, it's much like my free-motion "loop-d-loops", but with squares instead of circles.

I selected grey thread in the same shade as the koalas - so that the stithcing over the koalas fades back a bit.  I'm very pleased with the results!

 And here's the finished quilt!

40" x 56" - quilted on the Bernina Q-matic longarm ("Panto_Square Meander" stitch design, end-to-end) - cotton batting

The back is solid green - and here the stitching really shows up.  I love the effect!

I'm getting quite a bit more comfortable with the Q-Matic now, and have managed to figure out how to handle it when the top thread breaks and when the bobbin runs out, which happened a couple of times on this project.

What I don't know how to do is: restart quilting after shutting the machine off halfway through.  I'm sure it's just a matter of saving the design in the computer properly, but I won't be attempting it on any projects until I've successfully done it with some practice scraps.

Quilt 101: Indigenous Zig Zag

Oh, I'm proud of this one.  I really am!

I posted about this project a few weeks ago: "Indigenous Zig Zag"

I bought the fabric at last years' Australasian Quilting Convention here in Melbourne.  It was a very large bundle of fat quarters, each piece a different design inspired by Australian aboriginal art work.  I pulled out the gold/red/brown prints and used a quilt design I'd purchased in Florida several years ago (but hadn't gotten around to making).

Well - here it is!

(doublclick to see a larger image)

It's 50" x 75" with 100% cotton batting.  There are 463 individual pieces - that may be a new record for me.

It took me a while to decide how to quilt this one.  Using brown thread was pretty much an easy decision.  I chose solid brown fabric for the backing, and dark brown thread pretty much disappears on the top.  But what stitch design should I use?

I got out my rulers!  I did a simple, straight-forward stitch-in-the-ditch around the 3 narrow outer borders, then did the same "...in the ditch" around the copper zig zags.  But I needed just a bit more quilting in the large center of the quilt.

Here's a closeup photo with lines drawn in yellow, showing the stitch pattern for the quilting.  It's just inter-connected triangles - simple, really.

And here's what the back looks like:

The stitching around the outer borders is easier to see on the back, as is the zig-zag and triangle shapes.

All the stitching is done with my rulers (it's just about impossible to keep the lines straight without a ruler).  This is the most work I've done with rulers to date.  At first it was really awkward working with the ruler, but as I went along, well, I found that once I relaxed it got easier.

I still have half the fat-quarters stack I bought at the convention last year. I may just make another one of these!