Flower in a Pot #8 - The Quilting

I love free motion and I love feathers so I've been quilting all sorts of different feathers on these Flower in a Pot quilts and number 8 is no exception.

This time I tried quilting really large feathers and then filled them on the inside with echoes.  I like the way it looks a lot though I think it would look nicer if there were more filler around it so you could see it a little better.

Here's is a closeup of the top of the quilt complete with camera string.  Oops!  I really love this lime green rick rack in the binding.  It adds an extra touch.

I'm headed to the Sneak Preview of the Minnesota Quilter's Show in St. Cloud tonight!  I'm excited.  I hope you all get excited about something quilty today too.

Suzy

Fun Geometric Inspiration

I love all thing geometric.  I usually work in batik fabrics and if there's one with a geometric print it jumps off the bolt and has to come home with me.  Unless it's brown.  Brown is not my color.  I have recently found these inspirations.

The first one is a bulletin board border strip I found in a colleague's classroom.  I can see quilting circles or spirals and then coloring some of them in.  I also love the random red circle at the bottom of the border.  Doing something like that would definitely add interest.

I also really like this chevron notebook.  It would make an interesting modern quilt.  Although I'm not sure I'd want to use a silver lame.  Maybe fairy frost for the shiny parts?

This is the light fixture outside my grandmother's house.  I love the circles.  I'm not sure quite how you would imitate it in quilting, but it is an interesting texture.

The picture below is the back of one of my student's sweaters.  I really like the southwest feel of it and would totally consider making a similar pattern except that I have an aversion to half square triangles.  I suppose it could be paper pieced.  It's a thought for the future.

One of my quilting buddies brought this napkin to Quilter's Night Out at the local quilt shop the other day.  I love it!  It's totally a quilt that could be appliqued.

I hope your Monday brings you some inspiration!  It's my LAST Monday of the school year and I am overjoyed that next week I can play with my sons and do some quilting on a Monday at my leisure!

Suzy

Flower in a Pot #8 - Part Two

I'm working on my Flower in a Pot Quilt Along and having a blast as usual.  My last post (click here) was all about selecting fabric for my flower.  After working on it I decided there was one piece I wasn't sure of.  If you look below the dark purple top of the flower below you will see two coral colored pieces.  I thought they stood out too much so I decided to try a few other fabrics.

I tried orange instead.  It doesn't seem any better though.

What about a real change....lime green!  Nope, it looks strange.

I finally decided to stick with the original coral fabrics.  Below you can see that I've stitched layer one.  If you look at the stem of the pot you can see that I chose to do my blanket stitching around it in a lime green thread.  I chose lime green because I thought if I used pink it would take away from the pattern of the fabric.

The back after layer one has been stitched.  I use a tear-away stabilizer that I rip away before I layer the quilt.

After a few more layers.  I got so excited I forgot to take pictures of different layers!

The back after many layers.

Happy Saturday!  I hope you get to quilt some today.  Please join me over at my Machine Applique Adventures Facebook Group.

Suzy

Flower in a Pot #8 - Part One

Today's blog is all about how I pick fabric.  I found this particular Flower in a Pot really challenging.  I started out with some pretty greens...

...and some pretty pinks...

...that all coordinate with this really zany batik fabric for the pot!  I had to have this fabric a few years ago and a vase seems like just the thing to make out of it.

Now it was time to start playing with greens.  I need four.  They need to have some contrast between them.  This top picture the lightest green on top is very faded compared to the rest and it just doesn't look good.

 Here is a different green that is much brighter that really makes all the greens sing together compared to the photo above.  These were my final choices.

I decided to do the top of the flower on this amazing batik.  Think of all the texture you get by using this dot print as the tip of the flower!

I have no idea why I decided to take pictures on top of this "There was An Old Lady That Swallowed a Fly" book, but I did.  It might make a fun quilting pattern?!  Here is how I test our fabrics to see if I like them.  It's a great fabric, lots of movement, but it just doesn't play well with the other petals.

Here was a different purple I tried.  It think it really clashes.

A blue and purple print.  It didn't work either.  The blue sticks out.

Dark purple?  It's okay, but it's really dark compared to the other fabrics.

This is a fun print, but it's too gray in the background for my liking.

This print is okay.  I like it.

Here is the final flower!  I love the dark top.

Happy Quilting!  6 more days until school is out for the year and this teacher has more time to sew!
Suzy

All in Stitches, Zumbrota, Minnesota

Since it's a holiday weekend I decided I needed to visit a new quilt shop!  My mother insisted we go to All in Stitches in Zumbrota, Minnesota which is about 50 minutes south of my home.  I am so glad she did!  We had a blast.

Mom is working her La Passacaglia quilt and is trying to pick a border for it.  We think we found one.  Yay!

I had a ton of fun poking around the shop.   It's quite impressive.  They have the largest collection of thread I've seen locally: Sue Spargo, Invisifil, Aurifil Wool, and many others.  I of course came home with 8 spools!  I told you....I am addicted to threads.

Here are a few pictures of the lovely shop.

Orange is this kiddo's favorite.  He must take after his mother.  I love it too!

There were lots of different trims and rick rack and buttons and embellishments.  It was great fun to poke around and check everything out.  I'm sure I missed a lot.  I look forward to my next trip!

We also had fun picking out fabric for my 7 year old son's first official quilt.  He wants to enter it in Machine Quilter's Exposition Midwest this fall.  He's a very competitive kid and really excited by the idea.  We bought a simple pattern and I too am excited to get started on it once school is out.

I hope this all brings you some inspiration.  It certainly did for me.

Happy Memorial Day!
Suzy

How to Quilt Double Bubble

I fully intended to shoot a video of how to do this, however it being two weeks before the end of the school year my teacher self just didn't have the time!  So pictures will have to suffice for now.

I used this "double bubble" stitch on my Playful Pinwheels project for Island Batik Ambassadors.  I believe it is an original fill pattern, but who knows, it may be out there somewhere.  Here is how I stitched it.

Step One:  Stitch a 1 to 1 1/2 inch circle.  I started at the top where I put the dot.  Then stitch two bubbles inside the dot.

Step Two:  Stitch two circles around the entire circle starting and stopping at the dot again.  You can do more circles if you need to switch direction or fill a little extras space.  Two is simply a guideline.  This particular drawing is a little oval shaped, but as you add more circles a little inconsistency here and there won't matter.

Step Three.  Back stitch over a part of your last circle and then start over at step one.

Continue to repeat steps one through three adding more and more circles:

Sometimes you won't be able to make a full circle because the pattern will run off the quilt or into a different color fabric.  In this case you either have to back track over your stitches back to the dot or stitch along the edge of the quilt/fabric as you see below.

Happy Quilting and Happy Memorial Day!  Don't forget to visit my Machine Applique Adventures Facebook Group.
Suzy

Quilting my Island Batik Playful Pinwheels

I am a doodler.  I almost always sketch out an idea for quilting before I do any stitching.  Below you can see the original idea I had for quilting Playful Pinwheels made with gorgeous Hollywood Hills Island Batiks.  I knew it was going to be a lot of straight lines, but I really liked the effect.

Now that I knew what I wanted to quilt, I picked out threads.  You can see that there are two green threads and two pink threads.  To check which I wanted to use I lay a little of the thread out on top of the fabrics and make a choice.

Below you can see some of the quilting I started with.  I put a rope in the darkest purple areas and in the pink and green areas I simply did curves from corner to corner.  I know this has a name, but I can't remember it right now.

In the background I decided to simply do a filler over the whole surface.  As a show quilter I usually do very small fillers.  I decided to do something in a larger scale for this quilt and I'm really happy with the results.  This is an original filler I designed I'm calling Double Bubbles.  Come back Saturday to see how it's stitched!

Here is the whole quilt with binding, but without binding stitched.  I ran out of time!  Such is life sometimes.

Happy Quilting!
Suzy