Restaurant Inspiration

These pictures were taken at one of my favorite local restaurants.  It's a Mongolian barbecue place.  These are in the bathroom.  Yes, I am that person.  The first two are part of a mirror frame and would make great free motion quilting patterns.

And the shape of this vase!?   Fabulous.

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Clam Flower #2 - Part 2

I am so excited to show you the rest of this flower!  For the first part click here.  

I was trying to decide between these two colors of thread for the top piece of the flower petals (the darker blue with the turquoise dots).   The left  one would stand out a lot (you can see it draped over the fabric) where as the right one blends more.  I decided to go with blend because the fabric stands out enough as it is.

Here I was making another thread choice for the oval you see between the two spools.  I decided on the thread on the left as the color was closer.

If you look carefully at the background fabric around the oval you can see that the background fabric is warping a little.  I decided to make a slit in the stabilizer on the back of the fabric in order to flatten the fabric before sewing the piece.  It worked perfectly.

Here's the slit I CAREFULLY cut using a seam ripper.

Here's what the fabric looked like once I'd turned it back over after cutting the slit.

And the final block!

The back of the final block.

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Free Motion Friday - Silk Trial Piece #2

I had a lot of fun playing with free motion work on this piece.  I started by stitching out some leaves with a green Glide thread (40 weight poly).  I then switched to a white Aurifil 50 weight thread for the rest of the quilting.  I had fun outlining the leaves and then doing a bubble outline.

Then I added tear drops at the top.

I did the background in a modern filler.  Straight lines with random bubbles and outlined bubbles.  It was fun and fast and very cute!

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Clam Flower #2

Here's the start of Clam Flower #2!  I had a lot of fun making a blue flower.

Here's layer 1:

And the back:

Layers 2 and 3.  You can see that I used a piece of light blue, then put on the pistils coming out of the top of the flower, and then put a piece of the same fabric in the front.  If you look closely you can see that the front piece uses a much longer stitch length.  It was fun to change it up a bit.

And the back.

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Spring Flower Inspiration

The flowers of spring are all popping out here in Minnesota.  Below are a gorgeous Yellow Lady Slipper from my lake property and some gorgeous dwarf iris from my mother's garden.  

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Clam Flower #1 - Part 2

Clam Flowers has become a bit of an obsession for me of late.  It's getting done a lot faster than I thought it would and I can't wait to keep working on it!  

Here's a link to Part One.

This is the back of layer three.  You can see that I am using a variety of sizes of blanket stitching.  I have come to using this because I think it adds a bit more variety to my blocks.

Here's the front of layer three.

This piece of green fabric at the bottom of the stem was giving me a few problems because I couldn't decide which thread to stitch it in.

I ended up picking a neutral green thread so it wouldn't stand out a lot (the right most spool above).

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Free Motion Friday - Silk Trial Piece #1

Over the next few weeks I'm going to show you the three silk trial pieces I did all quilted up!  I'm excited to share them.  For these small samples (they're 8 x 10 inches or so) I decided to just quilt what came to me when I sat down.

This piece of background fabric an accident.  I put it on top of my ironing board to catch leftover dye when I was ironing dry pieces of Dupioni Silk using Terial Magic stiffener.  I decided it was a fun border so I put a butterfly of Dupioni silk and leather (body) on it and then had fun quilting it.

Here you can see the background fill.  I did circles and random things inside circles.  I wasn't worried about being perfect so many of them are a little wonky looking.

For the top and bottom I used a 50 weight variegated Aurifil Cotton thread in pink that I received as an Island Batik Ambassador.  It was so fun to watch it changing color and I like the look over the dye.

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy