A quilt that was pieced as a Block of the Month turned out beautifully! It’s full of different designs and colours and was a delight to quilt!
I quilted it using the quilting design Nocturne Feathers by Bethanne Nemesh. I love the flow and density of her designs and as a result offer several of hers.
I have been professionally quilting for others for over 20 years and have collected many designs and am always adding more for my customers to choose from. If you have a design in mind and I don’t have it I will help you to find it and add it to my collection.
This quilt was trimmed and ready for binding at pick up!!
With a request for a baby quilt this one began with a cute but older baby print with baby blocks, rattles and such. Adding the read solid prints to the mix that played nicely with the print resulted in a super cute baby quilt! With the added bonus for my customer of using up fabrics from her stash!
She also pieced the backing from her stash adding more sweetness and fun!
Her quilt was trimmed and ready for binding at pick up!
The story of this lovely Christmas quilt really makes me smile!
It was pieced by a longtime and expert quilter, which I could tell by her piecing. I have quilted other quilts of hers as well.
Sadly (and of course not why it makes me smile) she began developing dementia as this one was being completed and is no longer able to quilt.
The part that makes me smile is that her family has chosen to finish her quilts so that they will be used and enjoyed.
There was a lot of bulk in some of the areas where the corners met and I didn’t want to add any distraction to the piecing/design of the quilt with the quilting. I chose the pantograph Bayside for its soft flow…I also love how it plays so nicely with the candy cane backing!
This quilt was trimmed and ready for binding at pick up!
I love summer and this year we had, at least in my opinion, lovely weather.
Unfortunately for the bears and for our community the weather we had did not produce a great crop of berries for the bears!
So what is a hungry bear to do, especially when it’s time to fatten up and get ready to hibernate…they do love apples and so we had a visitor. The city and area has had far more visiting bears than usual!
Neighbours up the road from us have had a Momma and her three cubs hanging around for a few weeks. I suspect this one is one of the cubs and spent the day returning to our tree despite our presence.
We usually wait until after the first frost to pick the apples but choose to pick them that day…so it’s back to making apple juice again.
On the quilting front this Bear in the Tree quilt recently left the studio. It was quilted using the design Star Swirl and I stopped around the appliqués in order to allow them to pop. (They were outlined and minimally quilted in order to keep the density similar to the background)
The quilt was trimmed and ready for binding at pick up.
One very beautiful Sunday morning my daughter Katie and my brother and I set out for a hike at Sleeping Giant Provincial park which is about an hours drive from here.
It’s a park and area that holds many cherished memories of mine and was so wonderful to spend the day enjoying with family!
We are surrounded by amazing nature and these mushrooms caught my eye so I am including them in this story just because!
Living so close to Lake Superior, I wonder how many people just take the lake for granted. I have always been amazed by its beauty and strength along with its ever changing views.
After our hike we had lunch at store at Silver Islet https://silverisletgeneral.ca another very special place in my heart.
One of my earliest summers in Thunder Bay I was gifted with stays with a friend and her family at Silver Islet and I have so many very happy and interesting memories from that time in my life.
As we were driving back along the narrow road looking at the different mining camps, I mentioned the cemetery that my friend and I visited all those years ago as in close to 50 years ago….just as we were talking about that my daughter noticed friends of theirs coming to shore in their dingy…their sailboat docked nearby.
They invited us to see where they are building their summer camp and would we like to visit the cemetery!!
The cemetery is located within the provincial park and due to that and rules of provincial parks the cemetery has been left to nature. It used to be maintained by the campers association. Still it was so interesting to see again.
My daughters friends have built a sauna/guest house first which you can see in the background of my picture of their wood burning hot tub.
I love that they are building to include the natural stairs!
One last picture from the day…sometimes the weeds produce amazing beauty!
I often don’t have the name of the pattern used to piece the customer quilts that I work on and this is one of them.
My customer chose the quilting design Lovely for her quilt…hence the name. I agree, it’s a lovely quilt 😊
Sometimes and in this case I see a design used by another quilter and add it to my collection, and in this case it came from my quilting friend Louisa. https://louisaenright.com
Louisa has been inspiring me in many ways for several years now!
We both quilt and often share design ideas. She is also my friend who really inspired me to play with Tara Faughnan, who if you follow me know that I have a lot of fun playing with colour palettes and patterns from.
Back to this quilt, the design was chosen by my customer and was a perfect choice adding the softness of curves to strong angular piecing.
I chose the thread colour, and especially love that the design shows so beautifully on the back of the quilt.
Like most quilts that I work on her quilt was trimmed and ready for binding at pick up.
Green is a colour often associated with Ireland aka the Emerald Isle. So what better colour to use for an Irish Chain Quilt!
This one was lovingly pieced by my customer as a gift for her daughter. (who loves green!)
We chose the quilting design Nocturne Feathers, a fairly new addition to my collection and an additional design by Bethanne Nemesh.
My customer and I met at the local fabric store to find a backing for this quilt and we found a perfect brighter green for the backing ☘️
As a side note, if you are purchasing backing yardage it’s a good idea to have an idea of how much you will need for your quilt as sometimes staff at a fabric store perhaps aren’t quilters so aren’t aware of the calculations. Shops that specialize in quilting generally do know and are a great resource. I am also happy to help with the calculations so you end up with the right amount.
Her quilt was trimmed and ready for binding at pick up!
If you have been reading this blog for sometime or following me elsewhere you may recall the tree runners that I quilted a couple of years ago…
Well this summer I had the opportunity to add my quilting to another of this customers work. This time for a more summery runner that will be displayed on her table in a cottage that is being built in Quebec.
Some quilting jobs I find the need to marinate ideas for a while and this was one was one of them. My ideas usually wake me in the middle of the night and then I know! This job was no exception.
I knew that my customer wanted my freehand quilting in the background. It is a fun way to quilt once you get past the beginning which can feel a little intimidating!
When discussing this type of quilting with others, I always say that it’s the whole picture that others see not just the early beginnings and small areas of your quilting, if that makes sense.
Playing with design ideas and doodling on a white board with a plan really helps. Sometimes I will even write a list of de-sign elements that I want to include in my quilting. Other than that I let myself play.
I do however start with a little practice piece on the side.
Before beginning this runner I added faux trapunto under the flowers…I loaded batting as a backing onto the longarm and then outlined the flowers with stitching…this is where water soluble thread could be used however not wanting to wet a customer project I used regular thread.
All of the batting was trimmed away from the flowers.
This along with minimal quilting on the flowers allowed them to pop a bit especially with the background fill around them.
I will share pictures when they arrive of this runner bound and photographed in its home. For now I share this video of where my work I left off.…
This is the second quilt from my customer who also made the Log Cabin quilt in my previous post. Her piecing is certainly inspiring and also encouraging as I too hope to be piecing well into my eighties!
We chose the quilting design Bayside. I have different sizes of this design and used the larger one for this quilt. It has a wave like appearance (playing on the storm at sea) with a lovely density for a quilt that will be snuggled under.
I absolutely fell in love with this quilt top and backing…I do love blue!
The binding was provided by the quilt maker and so her quilt was trimmed and binding attached ready for hand stitching at pick up!
It’s no secret to my family and friends that I love the colour blue and this blue and white log cabin really made my heart sing!
Not only was this quilt perfectly pieced, my customer proudly told me that she is 88 yrs old. Blue is also her favourite colour…she drove here in her beautiful blue Subaru…a very inspiring woman for sure!
I chose the quilting design Waterworld which added the density I prefer for a wall hanging … not only that it really adds fun visual appeal..
My customer provided the binding ready to attach so not only was her quilt trimmed but with the binding attached it was ready for some relaxing hand stitching to complete her project.
Wendy’s Quilting and Life 