March Madness (NOT Basketball!): New Tilda Fabric + Stonefields Quilts for Nanette (and for Rebecca)

Today I'm sharing Nanette's Stonefields quilt that I quilted for her in January of 2023.  This was one of fourteen quilt tops (out of a stack of many more!) that she had originally planned to quilt herself and had been feeling guilty about leaving unfinished -- you know, like quilters do!  With health challenges multiplying and the stack of quilts not getting any smaller, she decided to scale back some of that self-imposed pressure by having some of the quilts professionally long arm quilted by me.  

Nanette passed away suddenly a week ago, and that got me looking back through photos of her quilts again and thinking about how glad I am to have helped her achieve the satisfaction of seeing and enjoying her gorgeous quilts as finishes.

Nanette's 65 x 65 (Modified) Stonefields Quilt with Filigree E2E Quilting

First things first, let's credit the pattern designer.  Stonefields is an original pattern by Australian quilter Susan Smith, which she was commissioned to make by Paramount Studios for a film that was shot in Ireland.  I have no idea which film; what I've shared with you is all the info I was able to squeeze out of the World Wide Web!  Stonefields is a sampler quilt combining appliqué with EPP (English Paper Piecing) and machine piecing, and Nanette shared that this was the most expensive pattern she ever purchased and that made her feel even more pressure to have a finished quilt to show for what she'd invested in it.  

So, I know what some of you are thinking -- edge-to-edge quilting over hand stitched appliqué?!  I know, I know.  Nanette's original plan was to hand quilt this one, but she realized that she had more quilt tops that "deserved" hand quilting than she would ever be able to complete in her lifetime.  Custom machine quilting was outside of her own skill set and beyond her budget, especially considering the number of tops she wanted to finish all at once.  And so she sent Stonefields to me, and I recommended the simple loops of the Filigree allover quilting design.

That Bunny Rabbit Is My Favorite!

With this quilt, it was really important that the appliqué and patchwork should be the star of the show and the quilting should just be a supporting element.  

Deco Blocks 3A + Quilting Piano Key Border on the 1984 Sampler

I finished half of the 3A blocks (Kona Solids Thistle and Indigo) for my Deco quilt last week!  Just  nine more of these light purple/indigo blocks to go before I can begin assembling the blocks into a quilt top.  It's amazing how much more one can accomplish when one is NOT twiddling her thumbs in a court house all day waiting to get rejected from jury duty!

9 of 18 Deco 3A Blocks Added to the Design Wall

I love the way the dark Willow green and Indigo 3B blocks recede visually and the Thistle/Indigo 3 blocks seem to come forward.  That's intentional; I played with those effects when I was creating my color scheme for this quilt in EQ8 (back in November of 2021, cough cough, change subject...). Anyway, I'm looking forward to wrapping this quilt up soon and moving on to something new.

Last week, when I shared a photo of the new Slimline lamp I'm enjoying for night time sewing, Nancy asked what happened to the view of the pool outside my window.  The pool didn't go anywhere; it was just hidden behind the window shades!  This is my new morning sewing routine (note the latte off to the right on my IKEA cart):

First Things First: Caffeine + 30 Minutes of Sewing

In our house in North Carolina, our bedroom and my studio were both on the 2nd floor.  My routine was to come downstairs to make coffee, then sit down in front of my computer while I drank it.  Many times I'd get sidetracked by email or whatever and realize that a couple of hours had gone by before I knew it -- WHOOSH!  But with our current house so much smaller and all on one level, I actually have to walk past my sewing machine to get to my computer.  So I am trying a new routine.  Now I go from the coffee machine straight to the sewing machine, still in my pajamas, and get my 30 minutes of sewing in BEFORE I check my email.  Because honestly, what could possibly be in my in-box that can't wait 30 minutes anyway?

All 36 Deco 3B Blocks Completed! Woo Hoo!

Hello and happy Monday!  I am delighted to share that I finished all fourteen of the remaining 3B (in Kona Solid Indigo and Willow green) for my Deco quilt last night!  I am especially proud of how much I got done because I got called in for jury duty on Wednesday and didn't get any sewing done on Thursday, either.

Deco Bed Quilt Blocks 1, 2, and 3B Completed

Those two blank rows near the center of the quilt need eighteen of Block 3A, which is nearly identical to Block 3A except that there is one more 1" square patch and, in my version of the quilt, Block 3A will combine the Indigo (dark navy) background fabric with Kona Solid Thistle, the lighter of the two purple fabrics used in my log cabin blocks for this quilt.  Sensible quilters will have followed the faster strip piecing instructions in the Deco pattern instructions from Lo & Behold, but I have cut out individual patches for all of my blocks for reasons I've rehashed in previous blog posts.

Nine 3A Blocks Ready for Chain Piecing

My method for staying organized while chain piecing those last 14 3B blocks worked well for me, so that's how I'll be piecing the 3A blocks.  In the photo above, I've laid out the 3A block with nine  fabric patches in each stack.  Once I've completed the first nine blocks, I'll lay out the last nine blocks in the same way.

Custom Quilting Marybeth's circa 1984 UFO + Cranking Out Deco Blocks

Happy Monday, everyone!  Congratulations to the Eagles fans out there, and my condolences to the Chiefs fans.  Not that I watched even five minutes of the Superbowl -- I'd rather sit in my laundry room for four hours watching the clothes go round and round than sit in front of a television watching grown men run around and clobber each other over a weird-shaped, ugly ball.  So HAH!  My husband and sister-in-law are from Philly, however, so while they were up at the house cheering their team I snuck off to the quilting studio to start quilting the borders on my friend Marybeth's UFO sampler quilt that dates back to 1984.

Wasatch Bella Bella Feather Border and Corner Quilting Design

When Marybeth showed me these blocks and told me the story of the quilt, I promised her that if she finished the quilt top I would custom quilt it for her.  This was supposed to be a "big boy" quilt for her son Nathan, who is now a married father in his forties.  The blocks are hand pieced and hand appliqued in neat, even stitches and it would be an intolerable shame if the quilt never got finished at all.  

Challenges for Marybeth included finding suitable border fabric, because she didn't have enough left of the fabrics from the blocks and may have used the fabric for some other project over the years.  Although there is no purple in her quilt blocks, I think the solid purple border fabric she chose works really well because it's the right value and hue to coordinate with the other colors well.

Challenges for Rebecca included coming up with quilting designs that would complement the vintage 1980s style of the sampler blocks and fabric without overpowering them, and without skewing too modern or too formal.  Another challenge was remembering how to lay out and size a border design to fit the quilt border and to accommodate for the quilt drawing up during stitching...  Too bad I didn't revisit this Q-Matic border quilting tutorial on Bernina's We All Sew blog before I loaded this quilt.  I loaded, basted, and did all of the stitch in the ditch quilting with monofilament thread a couple of months ago, and I did not remember Bernina Educator Denise Jones' tips about marking the center and quarters of the long sides of the quilt to make placing the border designs easier.  Next time!  Here's a shot of Marybeth's quilt on my frame where it languished for weeks, waiting for me to pick a design and get up the courage to start quilting it already!

Post-SID, Pre-Border Quilting Paralysis Syndrome

New Cabinets, New Machines + Deco Returns to the Design Wall

Good Morning and Happy February, everyone!  My kitchen and bath remodeling that was supposed to be complete by January 20th is still not done, and we've moved into the home we're remodeling in that our furniture is here and we're sleeping here, but we're not really moved in because there is still so much unpacking and organizing and figuring out where things are going to go, in a house that is even smaller than the last one and also most likely temporary.  I took a break from all of that last night to get out my Deco quilt project (dating back to November of 2021) and arrange the blocks on my design wall.

Deco Quilt WIP, will finish at 102 x 102

My main motivation for getting Deco up on the design wall was so I could physically count how many more of these green and indigo checkerboard-like blocks I need to make.  The directions in the Deco Quilt pattern by Lo & Behold Stitchery involve faster strip piecing construction, but I wasn't able to follow those directions because I decided it would be fun to use 12 different colors instead of 6, and I also decided it would just be easier to to cut all the patches individually with AccuQuilt dies and then sew the blocks one by one rather than figuring out how to adapt the pattern instructions to my custom color scheme.  And now here I am, up to my armpits in the consequences of those decisions as the quilt top construction drags out across three and a half years, four different sewing machines, three different sewing rooms, and two household moves.

Let's Make Blocks That Are Too Small On Our New Sewing Machine!

I traded in my Bernina 790 Plus and my embroidery-only Bernina 700E sewing machines for the new TOL (top-of-the-line) model, the Bernina B 990.  (Two reasons: I wanted to reduce the number of sewing machines I own so I can work more efficiently in a smaller space, and I'm looking forward to playing with some of the new high tech features on this machine).  The first thing I sewed with the new machine were two of these Deco quilt blocks, and they both finished too small because I forgot that I need to sew with a SCANT quarter inch seam (vs a true quarter inch seam).  Well, guess what?  I'm using them anyway and I'll fudge them when I join the blocks together.  So there!

Happy New Year 2025! My Pity Party Has Concluded; Back to the Pretty Quilts...

 Alright you guys — wanna know how many personal quilts, or personal sewing projects of ANY kind, I finished in 2024?  ZERO.  But 2025 is a brand-new year full of fresh possibilities and lots of pent-up creative energy.  I quilted a quilt for myself yesterday!

42 x 45 Untitled, from Maria Shell Improv Workshop

It’s just a small baby quilt, a way to use up one of the improvisationally pieced striped units I made in my Zoom workshop with Maria Shell back in September, along with some smaller yardage pieces from my stash.  The irregularity of wonky improv piecing looks very child-friendly to me, and that inspired me to use an allover quilting design (Color B2B by Anne Bright) that I’ve owned for several years but was never able to talk a client into using on a quilt.  

Color B2B Quilting Design by Anne Bright with YLI 40 Tex Cotton Thread in Rio de Janeiro

I love how it turned out!  I chose YLI 40 Tex Cotton Thread in variegated Rio de Janeiro after carefully checking that every shade in this rainbow thread was a match to fabrics I used in my pieced stripe unit.  I wanted something with an equal amount of contrast against both the lime green and the cherry red fabrics and I’m very happy with how it turned out even though cotton thread is a linty beast to work with!  My lint brush got to see lots of action.