A quilted Christmasy quilt

Today's quilt is one I quilted for my friend, Susan. The pattern is called Wrap It Up and we made it in a class at our LQS. It uses just three colors, but has a nifty interlocking "box" look. She used black with beautiful gold metallic swirls, red with gold dots and black with gold dots. Christmasy, but not too christmasy.

I have a harder time using pantographs, so I've been practicing my freehand allover designs. The only way to get better at it is to just quilt some quilts.  So I took the plunge and quilted her top using a freehand allover holly leaf and berry swirl with some pine branches thrown in. I used black Omni for the top and black So Fine in the bobbin with black 80/20 batting.

A berry grouping with a flourish

 

A lot of texture without being too distracting but lending to the Christmasy flavor.

Here you can see some of the holly leaves and pine branches.

 

A helpful tip: I always practice on paper or a whiteboard first. Once the quilt is on the frame, I put my big piece of acrylic (with colored tape around the edges to mark the boundaries) on the quilt top and doodle the design. Then I really get an idea of how the quilting will look on the quilt. I'll try and get a picture of that for my next post.

longarm quilt #44 A Fun Project on the Longarm - Tootie Fruitie

This is a really cute little girl quilt I did for my greatniece a couple years ago:



I got the idea from watching Linda Taylor's quilting show on the web. Pam Clark was a guest and she quilted the background and then added the applique all with the longarm. I fussy cut the flowers and used loops and zigzags to attach the shapes.

I used King Tut thread in Harem and peach So Fine in the bobbin. The Harem variegated thread had the perfect colors to go with the flowers. I also added those crazy 3-d strips to the sashing with the longarm.

I took a 2" wide strip, folded it in thirds and sewed it down the middle on my DSM. Then using a scribble stitch with the longarm, I added folds and "ruffles" to add some dimension. It would also be cute with buttons. I used Hobbs Polydown batting so all the different background quilting really showed up and added more fun dimension.  A little different view:

By the way, I keep a list of quilts with notes so I can look back & see what I've actually accomplished and that I'm getting better with practice. I'm really happy with how this turned out; I may need to do another one like this soon!