Quilting Warm and Fuzzy

I've nearly completed the quilting on the Warm & Fuzzy quilt. First, I quilted around all the log-cabin diamonds by doing different kinds of loops every few strips (outlining 3 squares in each block) and free-motion quilting around the shapes in the focus-fabric in the middle. (There's a photo of the back below, where you can see the quilting better.)

I have a soft spot for feathers, so decided to make a feather circle in the center of each solid diamond, similar to the this quilt I raffled off to raise money for Doctors Without Borders in 2011.



The blocks on the Warm & Fuzzy quilt are quite a bit bigger, so I made my own template. I only made a quarter and pinned it to the quilt with a sewing pin, rotating it to mark all 4 quarters. It worked well :)

In the solid triangles around the outside, I also quilted feathers, mostly free-hand for a less rigid look. I just chalked out 3 wavy lines and feathered along them. My feathers changed quite a bit between the first and last triangle (I was trying different techniques), but since I quilted tone-on-tone, it's not very noticable. To fill the empty space between the 3 feathers, I added a flower on each side.

Here you can see the quilting around the log-cabin diamonds a bit better:

I like tone-on-tone quilting. One day I will tackle a whole-cloth quilt in white. I love the effect of intricate free-motion quilting on white fabric! I have been looking at a lot of Diane Gaudynski's work, which is gorgeous.

And here's the almost complete top. I am currently deciding whether to quilte the border in burgundy or black on black. And what to quilt in the border. And what colour to use for binding... The black border is a bit oppressive, now that I look at it in this photo. What do you think?

Another start...

A while ago, I posted about the idea of this quilt - part of the top is finished now! And has been finished for a while. To be a baby-quilt, it'd need something along the side, but I think I want it to be at least lap-quilt size, so I'm playing around with ideas for the frame.


I intentionally laid the colurs out to be dark-light-dark.

These are all left-overs from a MODA Wonderland quilt, mixed with solid gray to make about 4.5" HSTs.

Helping Out A Friend

A dear friend of mine is going through a difficult time - too much worrying, and extreme amount of worrying, so much, that it's affecting her life enjoyment and her daily functioning. She's going on vacation with me soon, but I also thought, what better form of therapy (besides counselors and pills :) than quilting. She's never quilted before, but I asked her if she's interested in handywork and sewing, and she gave me the thumbs up.
So first I thought I'd have her piece a little quilt, but the layout I had in mind would have been tricky, with bias lines and triangles:


So instead, I whipped it together in less than an hour and will sandwich it for her - she can handquilt it on her own time, and I'll give her basic lessons on handquilting and binding on our vacation.

She loves birds, so I went through my stash and found all the fabrics I could with bird themes. It turned out cute, I think :)


The diamonds are 6"x6" with light blue background and blue-purple-yellow batik as the framing triangles (cut from 6" squares, except the 4 smaller corner triangles which I cut off 6.5" squares).

I really hope this will work for my friend, it's worth a try anyway, maybe we'll have a novice quilter soon!!!