Custom Quilting Background Fills on My Jingle Appliqué Quilt

Happy Wednesday-Before-Thanksgiving!  Is today a cooking/baking day for you, a traveling day, a cleaning day, or a decorating day?  For me, it's a QUILTING day!  This has been my week off from quilting for clients, and I've been hustling along with the custom quilting on my own Christmas quilt, hoping to get it finished and ready to display for the holidays.  I just wanted to pop in and share a few quick images of my progress so far.  This is the portion of the center medallion that I was able to mark and quilt yesterday:

Center Appliqué Medallion with Background Fill Quilting In Progress

By the way, before I go any further I should mention that the pattern book for this quilt, Jingle Quilt by Erin Russek, will be on sale tomorrow through Monday for C&T Publishing's Black Friday and Cyber Monday site wide 30% off holiday sale event.  If you've been thinking you might want to make your own version of my Jingle quilt, or you've had your eye on any other quilting or crafting books from C&T Publishers, use the codes BLACKFRIDAY30 (valid November 24-27) and CYBERMONDAY30 (on November 28) to get 30% off your order.  (Yes, this post contains affiliate links, blah blah disclaimer blah...)

Seriously, I can't recommend Erin's patterns and instructions enough.  This is my very-first-ever appliqué project after years and years of admiring appliqué quilts and thinking they were too difficult for me to attempt.  Erin's instructions are so clear and her methods are goof-proof, even for beginners.  

Move Over: A Modern "Klimt" Strip Quilt Finish for Julia + A FMQ Refresher for Rebecca

And now, back to our Regularly Scheduled Programming...  Look at this beautiful Move Over quilt that my client Julia brought me for quilting a few months ago!  Back in the Summer when I was quilting this, the staggered strips of turquoise blue in this quilt reminded me of ocean waves crashing on the shore -- the white strips were the foam.  But now, with all the snow getting dumped on the Northeastern United States, I see a blizzard in Julia's quilt, and the black and white polka dots are snowflakes!

Julia's 60 x 77 Move Over Quilt with Rolling Waves E2E

Move Over is a pattern by Mari Martin for Connecting Threads that is available as an instant download here.  It's a beginner-friendly pattern that would go together quickly for a more experienced quilter, and I can envision it looking great in a mix of red, green and white fabrics for the holidays.  I quilted this for Julia with Rolling Waves E2E, a digital design that can definitely suggest waves as the name implies.  On Julia's quilt, this quilting design in conjunction with the straight line "bars" and irregular speckled polka dot fabric also reminds me of a recurring motif in Gustav Klimt's fabulous Art Nouveau paintings from early in the 20th century:

Bildnis Emilie Flöge by Gustav Klimt, 1902, Wien Museum

See those wavy lines with swirls in the woman's dress?  

Ten-Year Projects In Progress: Update on Frankenwhiggish Rose, Jingle BOM, + Deco Quilts

So...  I put my Whig Rose blocks back up on my design wall yesterday morning to see how much work remains to be done on them.  I started this needle turn appliqué project in March of 2014 (you can read about it here) and it's been an on-again, off-again kind of thing.  I'm finding it really monotonous to appliqué the same shapes over and over again.  The reason I haven't started any of the Sarah Fielke 2022 Block of the Month projects I signed up for is that I wanted to finish THIS appliqué project before starting on a new one, and this one ain't finished yet!

FrankenWhiggish Blocks on November 12, 2022

Just for kicks, let's compare today's photo to the one from the last time I had these blocks up on my design wall, back in January of this year:

FrankenWhiggish Blocks on January 12, 2022

So it took me TEN MONTHS to complete eighteen of those wretched little tulips!  AAAARGH!!  And I still have ten more to go.  

Where Are My Lone Star/Star of Bethlehem Quilter Peeps??? Rebecca Needs a New Challenge Project!

 Alright, y'all -- from time to time I have to subject you to one of these posts where I get carried away by the wild, delirious possibilities of new projects that I may or may not be starting.  Today is one of those days, and I'm about to drag you around the inside of my brain like you're on Willy Wonka's wild ride through the chocolate factory!!

Having recently finished my Nanu Nanu! Retro '80s Building Blocks Sampler quilt that I started in 2016, and having finished my mammoth Pineapple Juice Nostalgia pineapple log cabin quilt last year that I'd been working on since 2014, I am feeling like I have earned the right to start a challenging new project.   Especially since I have another major long-term WIP quilt, my Jingle applique sampler that I started in 2013, scheduled to go back on the longarm the week of Thanksgiving so I can finish custom quilting it.  Nevermind that I am still not done with my Frankenwhiggish Rose needleturn applique blocks or that I have yet to start any of the three Sarah Fielke BOM projects that I signed up for this year.  We have a saying about that in the South: I'm FIXING to start them...  ;-). Seriously, though -- I've decided to wait on those until the end of the year, when the entirety of all three patterns is available to me, so I can confidently ignore all of the directions and do whatever I want with them, out of order, as I please.  And so, this reproduction pattern from Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts came sauntering by, shaking its tail feathers at me, and I am feeling smitten:

Behold, Stars Upon Stars!

Stars Upon Stars 64 x 74 19th Century Reproduction, Pattern available here

Stars Upon Stars is a late 19th century quilt owned by the Grand Rapids Public Museum in Michigan, and Edyta Sitar obtained permission from the museum to draft her pattern.  You can read more about this quilt and zoom in on high resolution photos on the museum's web site here.   You can purchase the Laundry Basket Quilts pattern to make your own version of this quilt on Etsy here (and yes, this post contains affiliate links to help pay for the asylum to which I'll likely be committed if I actually start this quilt and it doesn't go well...  😅)

Mary's Offset Gradients Quilts + A Show Ribbon for Talia's and Michelle's American Violet Quilt

Yippee, Skippy -- I get to share another of Mary's jaw-dropper quilts with you today!

Offset Gradients (Spectrum) Quilt for Mary

Mary's 57 x 78 Offset Gradients (Spectrum) Quilt, Pattern Available on Etsy Here

Mary used the Spectrum quilt pattern from Alison Glass to make her Offset Gradients quilt, and you can find that pattern for sale on Etsy here (this post contains affiliate links).  You can see Mary's completed quilt, all bound and finished, and read more about her process on her blog Quilting Is In My Blood here.  Oh my gosh, I love how this quilt turned out SO MUCH!  It was so hard to pack this up and ship it back to Mary when it was finished!!

Offset Gradients with Sunrise Chevron Quilting

We used Hobbs 80/20 Black Cotton/Polyester batting for this quilt because of the deep, rich fabric colors.  An 80/20 batting gives beautiful definition to a quilting design without getting too "puffy."

This is one of my favorite quilts that I've quilted because it's such an excellent example of how you can achieve the visual impact of custom quilting with an allover, edge-to-edge quilting design.