"The Tree Quilt" also known as "Diamond in the Forest Quilt"

Since I referenced this quilt in my previous post, I thought I’d show it again. (The completed quilt was first post in September 2014). It was fun to note that I renamed the quilt once it was complete, something I used to do frequently with quilts I designed myself. While under construction, I called it the “Diamond in the Forest” quilt but when it was done, it became “The Tree Quilt”.

It’s a half square triangle quilt, with one block that has a inset reverse circle patch. I quilted that block to look like it was a hole in a tree trunk. It was a lot of fun doing that free motion quilting. The quilt has a wool batting so it is light and lofty, and really shows off the quilting.

On the back there is a forest fabric. I looked to see the date on the label and … oops. No label. That’s a bit embarrassing! This is one of those times that I’m grateful for the blog and can look back to see the date on posts I wrote while making the quilt, so I can “post-label” this quilt I made in 2014!

From Panel to Placemats

I picked up a panel from one of the online live sales I follow though I no longer remember which shop nor who printed the panel.

I’m getting ready to free motion quilt a several quilts and these were perfect for getting some practice and checking to be sure the machine settings were all good. Curves in free motion are often tricky (they tend to “eyelash” if the tension isn’t perfect, but things this time look really good.

I hunted through my stash to come up with backing fabrics for these mats and found this great cupcake birthday fabric. So these place mats are reversible and are double duty. That’s a win-win!

Birthday Cupcake fabric on the back!!

"My Village" Quilt-in-a-Box Completed Quilt

Finally my Quilt-in-Box guild project quilt is complete! Our guild started this project in 2019 but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the blocks weren’t all done until last fall. There is information about this project in my posts from November 5, 2020 and November 12, 2020.

This quilt has both free-motion quilting and straight line quilting. Some blocks have both, while others just have one type of quilting. Here are some of the blocks to show the details.

There is a fair breeze in the ship’s sails and rolling waves in the water. I added portholes too.

The house in the center of this log cabin block is in a leafy neighborhood and there are puffy fair weather clouds overhead. The foxes are napping in the nearby wood and the otters are playing in the eddies in the stream.

There are fires lit in both hearths in this home. The roof has scalloped shingles on the roof and rough-hewn timber cladding. I added a 6 panel window to the door to make sure there is lots of light inside!

There is straight line grid work in the Whimsical Whirlwind block with free-motion quilting in the negative space.

The quilt backing is a French fabric with a design which is in keeping with all the tiny woodland animals in the fabrics of this quilt.

I designed the fabric with the little houses which is in many of the blocks. It is called “Little Houses” available at Spoonflower.com. Here are the links to “Little Houses” with the white background and and blue background.

This was a great quilt guild project, one which I’d be happy to do again! Many thanks to all the members who made blocks for my quilt!

Tula Pink's "Lil' Stinker" in my "Dodging the Skunk" quilt

Whew! I hustled and got my quilt, “Dodging the Skunk” OR “Skunks and Wild Roses” lap quilt done this past weekend. It was a perfect weekend for finishing up quilts…so cold here, that it broke the old record for the low temperature set back in 1917!

There is straight line quilting along the grid lines created by the big blocks. And free motion quilting inside both the skunk blocks and the chaining alternate blocks.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to quilt all that negative space in the alternate blocks, but when I started out on the first one, I realized I could quilt in a circle around the block without needing to stop. I was so delighted to see I had created a wreath of floppy wild roses. What could be better for a skunk quilt??

The skunks are outlined in their blocks, and there are swirls quilted around the skunks. Think whatever you will about that!!

For more info about my quilt pattern, look back at my last post.

I wasn’t sure if I was really going to like this skunky quilt. But now, because of the free motion quilting, I think it’s one of my favorites!

"Gnomes Spring Laundry Day" Quilt completed

“Gnomes Spring Laundry Day” quilt is done! This was a fun project! (You can click back on my posts on March 4, 2021 and March 11, 2021 for more information about how I designed and pieced the quilt).

Here’s how I quilted it. I did echo quilting around the square-in-a-square Economy blocks and around the trees. There is linear stitching in the yellow and orange bars. I used the #4 lingerie stitch on my Bernina 440 across the strips with the hanging laundry. Stretched out, the #4 stitch creates a wavy line that reminds me of a spring breeze.

Then I switched from using my walking foot and did free-motion zig-zags across the trees to look like branches of a pine tree. The zig-zags are different on all the trees, because no two trees are ever alike!

Around the back is a garden full of busy gnomes!

Note to the knitters out there who might be having a melt down the hand knit mittens hanging on the line in these photos: the mittens are dry (not recently washed and wet) and they are there just there as a prop in my photo because I couldn’t resist echoing the laundry line in the fabric! So not to worry. (And yes to your second question, I did knit the mittens, sometime way back when I was in a knitting-mitten phase)!

"Breezy Day" Star & Half-Square Triangle Quilt

Here it is—my “Breezy Day” lap quilt. The name was inspired by the fabric in the quilt, rather than the quilt’s design. IF I’d gone with the quilt design, it might have been “Stars on the Stairs”. At least, that what it looks like to me!

There is straight line quilting along the long white diagonals—just under the “stairs” as it were! The quilting starts at 1/2 inch between the lines of stitching, decreases to 1/4 inch and then 1/8 inch “match stick” over 6 rows of stitching. It will create great texture to the quilt once it has been washed.

I had a hard time deciding what to do with the large half square triangle blocks. The diagonal stitches run through the light side of the half square triangle block, but there was still a large section of the block without any quilting. The floral fabric design is so organic, that I didn’t want all the quilting be be straight line.

If finally decided to go with a free-motion quilted large spiral in the dark green block and echo that with a 1 inch spiral in the light half of the block. I love it!

Spiral Free-motion quilting and match stick straight line quilting

I did a stitch-in-the-ditch with my walking foot around each of the stars. I started in one corner of the central square, stitched around the square and then around the star points. This made it possible to quilt the entire star without stopping until it was completed quilted. This works on a small quilt with my domestic sewing machine but would be a struggle with a large quilt. On a large quilt, it would be better done free-motion or on a long-arm machine.

The fabric on the back of the quilt is an irregular linear grid design which I think is a perfect complement to the organic floral design fabric on the front of the quilt.

So that’s it—a lap quilt from design to completion.

How To Quilt a Free Motion Flower Design

I’ve just finished quilting the “Triple Barnstar” queen size quilt. I used my walking foot and did a lot of linear quilting, But this quilt has a number of large 9 inch blocks and large triangle blocks. Those blocks were still empty when I finished the linear echo stitching around the 3 stars in this quilt.

It’s a bit unconventional to mix walking foot quilting with free motion quilting but it was the right answer for this quilt. (In fact, I often mix these two methods of quilting).

I picked up the aster-like floral design from my background fabric and modified it to get a large daisy flower. You can see that little blue flower in the right hand upper corner of the photo below.

Here is how I stitched out my flower.

Set up your machine for free motion quilting. Drop the feed dogs on your machine and attach the darning foot. Make sure you are using a sewing machine needle meant to be used for quilting. It helps to have a low friction mat (I use a the regular Supreme Slider), on the table of your machine under the quilt, and pair of quilting gloves or clean gardening gloves with gripper dots to help move the quilt as you stitch. (The bright yellow gloves that you can see in one of the photos below are Dritz Fons and Porter Quilting Gloves. I also really like Machingers Quilting Gloves).

Start in the center of the block. Using the up-down needle needle function on your machine, pull the the bobbin thread from the back of the quilt. Put the needle in the down position.

Bobbin thread has been pulled up from the back of the quilt. Needle is down, reading to start quilting

Grab the tails of the two threads and stitch a circle, ending a couple stitches over your start point. I clipped the two threads now. If you are quilting a quilt for a show or as an heirloom, you should use a sewing needle to bury the thread ends in the middle of the quilt sandwich.

Stitch loops around the circle, creating the flower petals. Stitch at an even speed, slower than you normally would sew. It helps to turn down the stitching speed on your machine if you have that option. The slower speed helps to keep your stitch length regular and helps to prevent pulling on the back creating eyelash stitches. They eyelash stitches look like eyelashes. You’ll know them immediately if you see them. Eyelash stitches should be removed and resewn because the stitches aren’t anchored.

Sewing loops off the central circle to make lower petals

Once you have petal stitched all the way around the central circle, stitch a line between two to the petals to create a stem for a leaf.

Starting to stitch a stem for a leaf

Once the stem is the length you want, stop stitching. This will allow you to get a point on the end of your leaf. Then stitch a curve that will be half the leaf back to the stem stitching.

First half of the leaf

Now stitch the the other side of the leaf by sewing a loop on the other side of the stem, ending at the tip of the leaf. Then travel stitch back down the center of the leaf, on top of your initial line of stitches. And the end of the leaf, I usually stop travel stitching and stitch a couple of millimeters away from the first stem stitches to create a more realistic looking stem.

Travel stitching back along the stitches in the center of the leaf

I only made a wider stem on side of this flower. After you reach the center of the flower, travel stitch around the circle and out between two other petals to make another leaf if you want to do that. I initially quilted two flower with 4 leaves each, but then decided I preferred the 2 leaf design better.

Free motion quilting uses “motor memory”—your muscles working with your brain. It takes practice. Some designs, like these flowers come easily to me. Some I really struggle with. I have a friend who loves stitching a paisley pattern. Please don’t ask me to do a paisley design! I’ve learned to stitch what feels right to me, not what someone else can do. And it’s totally fine to create your own designs. In fact, with free motion quilting, I think that stitching designs that come naturally to you is the best way to go.

Notice: This blog is not monetized: I do not use affiliate links. When there are links in a post, they are to give credit to another creative person, because I like or have used a product, or to help the reader easily find supplies for a project.

Improv Scrappy Block Project 2017 Completed

It's (finally) done:  My 2017 year-long Scrappy Block Project!  Every month last year I sewed 2-3 improv blocks from two bags of odd scraps I had collected. At the end of the year I had 30 blocks that were 12 1/2 inches square.

I set the improv blocks between rows of blue and white blocks which were "orphans" from another quilt which I never made. The result is a bit wacky, but this is a quilt that is going to be used and definitely not too precious for the dogs for the dogs to sleep on it!!

The quilting is as improvisational as the blocks themselves!  I took my clues for the quilting from the composition and the fabrics in each block.  The quilting is a mix of straight line walking foot stitching and free motion quilting.  It seemed to take forever!!  But I had a good laugh when I was done and put it on a bed....I'd forgotten how big this quilt is!  I had thought I was quilting a twin size quilt, when reality it's a good size queen!  No wonder the quilting seemed never ending!!

Here are a couple of close-ups of the free-motion quilting in this project. 

Scrappy "Plus Surround" Quilt from 'Modern Plus Signs Quilts'

This is my completed "Plus Surround" quilt from the book, Modern Plus Sign Quilts.  There is review of the book on my March 29, 2018 blog post and discussion about making the quilt on the two subsequent posts.

There is straight line quilting on each of the plus signs which I really like. But I really struggled with how to quilt all of the negative space in this quilt (the yellow background). The quilt in the book has quilting radiating from the center of the quilt. I knew I didn't want to try to copy that. 

Because of the circular design, I decided to quilt the negative space with free motion circular loops. About half way done, I wished I'd done a misty soft linear/loopy fog-like design instead.  But it was way to late to do that!  The circular loops feel a bit too traditional for my taste, but it's growing on me! 

What's the best thing about this quilt? The great design of this quilt. It captures the viewer's attention!

Chicken Quilt!!

Free range chicken quilt!!  Five chickens, one rooster and one egg hiding in the grass!

As I explained in my last post, the foundation-pieced chickens and rooster started as patterns from the Electric Quilt 8 Block Library to which I added some details. I love the resulting birds! The free motion quilting was so much fun to do!

Here's how I quilted the wing on the chicken.  I used the corner on the chicken's back as my Two initial anchor points for my scallop design. Then I stitched the pattern freehand without any marking.  That's how I do all my free motion quilting unless I am quilting an animal shape.  I have to pre-draw animals so they stitch out consistently.  Use the arrows on the photos below to scroll through the steps I used to make the chicken's wing.

Here's the backing fabric on the quilt--another of Makower UK's fabulous prints!  I can walk through a fabric store and am always drawn to fabrics printed by this company! This fabric has been in my stash for a while and not longer readily available.

"Lila's Kitchen Hens" The Henley Studios, Makower UK

This quilt makes me happy!  It could be a table topper but I'll probably hanging it up.

Bear Paw Modern Low Volume Quilt: "Bears in the Meadow"

Here's my completed "Bears in the Meadow" low volume quilt with a modern setting using the classic Bears Paw block. I love how the bear paws are wandering to and fro off the margins of the quilt!

Along with swirls and several tiny hearts, there are 16 bears done with free motion quilting. (See my last post).  I initially thought I'd only stitch 5 or 6 bears into the quilting but I had so much fun that there are 16! You have to really look hard to find them! Even my count might not be accurate!

The quilt backing is a flower print with a large block of bear fabric in the middle. So, it's bears all round!!

I did try to get a photo of the quilt in a meadow but because the quilt is so large, that turned out to be rather difficult. Here is my best shot, taken from the top of the slide in my neighborhood playground!

in dappled sunlight in the park.

This quilt is so me!  It's a keeper!

Free Motion Quilting with an Animal Template

I had so much fun using free motion quilting for my "Bears in the Meadow" queen size quilt. I quilted it with my domestic Bernina 440.  The quilt is a Bear Paw Block quilt with a modern layout.  I'll show the whole quilt in my next post.

I decided it would be fun to but a couple bears into the quilt. I can stitch rabbits and carrots free-hand but from my initial bear sketches I knew I wasn't going to be able to free-hand stitch a brown bear!

I did a search of brown bears in Google Images and then came up with a drawing of a bear that I liked and thought I could stitch. I thought about cutting a plastic template but thought it would be difficult to cut smooth lines.  Then I thought about making copies of the bear on paper and stitching over the design on the paper.  That works but sometimes the stitches get pulled removing the paper and the stitches need to be very small which wouldn't match the other quilting.

I ended up just cutting out my bear drawing. I used a Clover Water Soluble Pencil to trace around my paper template. This pencil can be sharpened to a point and I find it rubs off easily like chalk. In fact it rubs off so well, that I needed to trace the bear just before I stitched it. If I pre-marked a block, I couldn't find the bear when I got the the block! The The paper template held up remarkably well.  The photo below was taken when the quilting was all done.

Paper template and Clover Water Soluble Pencil

Here are two bears traced out on fabric and at the bottom, a quilted bear with the marking still visible.

Every bear came out a little bit different. I love that!   I loved being able to put the bear in different places on the blocks using my cut out template.  This worked really well.  It's a technique I would happily use again!

African Animals Toddler Quilt

One Thanksgiving when I was in college in Minnesota, I went home with one of my friends who lived in South Dakota. After the festive dinner, when the dishes were done, the women sat down in the kitchen to work on crafts--making staw star ornaments, quilting and other handwork. That is a Thanksgiving tradition that I love, and try to carry on.

I had a quiet Thanksgiving this year.  I had pre-cut out some panels from donated fabric to make a charity toddler quilt. I was able to spend a couple hours Thanksgiving afternoon sewing the top of the quilt together.  I sandwiched it last week and finished it this past weekend.

This quilt is a collection of components.  In addition to the donated animal fabric, the 2 checkerboard borders where a stack of 6 patch blocks I picked up at a guild yard sale swap. The binding was made from left-over sections of binding from other quilts.

There is a variety of quilting in the quilt. The vertical bars have straight stitching 1/2 inch apart done with a walking foot. Running down the center of the top and bottom checkerboard border there is a machine embroidery stitch. 

There 3 free motion quilting fill patterns inside the blocks. I thought about what might be seen in the African bush. I started quilting near one of the springboks. Swirls of dust came to mind!  So several of the blocks have swirls.  In another blocks with a gorilla. I thought he would love having leaves, as would the parrots, and zebras. I also thought about the African night sky, far from city lights, filled with stars. So a single block is filled with stars! 

This was a happy project! It was so much fun to make and quilt!

Lab Puppies Quilt: A Simple Alternate Grid Quilt With Instructions to Design Your Own

As promised, here is the completed Lab Puppies quilt! 

It has a very simple alternate grid layout.  One square block was added randomly to each row of rectangular blocks. Those blocks add just enough disruption in the design to make the design more interesting and to give it some movement.

This is an easy design for for a quilt with fussy cut blocks that are all cut to the same dimensions. Here are instructions to design your own quilt.

1. Determine the size of the fussy cut blocks and cut enough for the size quilt you plan to make. The number of fussy cut blocks will be approximately half the number of blocks needed for the entire quilt.
2. The pieced 3 strip blocks are cut to the same width and height of the fussy cut blocks. To determine the width to cut each strip: add 1 inch to the width of the fussy cut block then divide that number by 3. You need the same number of strip blocks as fussy cut blocks. 
3. Cut 1 square block the height of the fussy cut block, using a different fabric--either a solid or fabric that reads as a solid. Cut one square for each row in the quilt.
4. Using a design wall, lay out the blocks, alternating fussy cut blocks with pieced strip blocks.
5. Now randomly add a square to each strip to disrupt the symmetric layout.  Scatter them around the quilt. In my design I always had a square paired with a fussy cut block. Do what looks good to you.
6. Cut the right hand border the height of the pieced quilt top.
7. Cut the bottom borders the full width of the quilt AFTER the right border is added.
8. Have fun designing your quilt!

Pink and Aqua with Stars Quilt

The Pink and Aqua with Stars lap quilt is done! 

Stars you ask?  If you look carefully, you will find 2 large hot pink/red 8 pointed stars with 16 patch centers. it also features squares in squares, both large and small,  and 3 chains of grey patches, one long and two short!

The quilt has one border, on the bottom, featuring triangles that look like pennants hanging on a line. 

This really is lap quilt.  The colors and pattern play best together when seen at close.

Hawaiian Cheater Quilt and Testing Sewing Machine Needles for Free Motion Quilting

Here's my completed "Hawaii at Home" quilt using the "cheater" panel "Matisse's Seaweed" from spoonflower.com (see my post March 3, 2016 for more details about Jeni's panel).  Also included are 4 patch blocks with actual Hawaiian print fabrics.  There is also a Hawaiian print fabric on the back of this quilt.

Here are two blocks from the panel showing quilting details.

I used this quilt to test a number of different needles to see which produced the best free-motion stitching with my Bernina 440 QE sewing machine.  I tried Schmetz 90/14 and Superior titanium 90/14 top stitch needles--both skipped stitches fairly frequently.  I also tried the Janome purple needles which friends tell me do a great job preventing skipped stitches on Janome machines.  Sadly, I had skipped stitches with them on my Bernina.

I had good results with ball point jersey needles but lots of sources I read stated they should not be used for quilting. 

The needle giving the best stitch quality without skipping on my particular machine was the Schmetz 90/14 Quilting Needle. 

Every sewing machine is different so this may not be the best needle for you.  However if you are having problems with skipped stitches and your machine is clean and you have tried everything you can think of, it's worth making a sample quilt sandwich and testing a variety of needle types and sizes to see what works for you.

Teen Boy Quilt

This a another quilt I made for the projects on-going through the Proper Bostonian Quilters Guild. It's for a teenage boy.  The quilt is the perfect size for a bunk bed.  It's just wide enough to hang over the mattress on each side and covers the bedding area on top of the bed.

I used a pattern called "Fractal" in the book, Quilt Lab, The Creative Side of Science, by Alexandra Winston.  I did change a couple of things in the pattern.  The quilt pattern is for a 60 x 60 inch quilt.  I added another row of 10 inch blocks at the bottom to make it a bed quilt.  And I used a solid piece of fabric (the squared stripes) at the center of the quilt in place of the 1 3/4 x 1 3/4 inch pieced patches in the pattern. That striped fabric at the center of the quilt is also the fabric used in the binding.

The quilt was quilted with free-motion stitching.  There are scattered stars, treble clefts and spirals in the stitching.

Here's a peek at the pieced back.  (The photos were taken at the city tennis courts in a local park. A fun way to hang a boy's bed size quilt)!

Quilting the Vintage Quilt Revival Sampler Quilt

During the winter of 2014 I participated in a the Vintage Quilt Revival Block Along making all the quilt blocks in the book, Vintage Quilt Revival.  

Piecing the 22 blocks in the quilt was a great adventure.  Some of the blocks were fairly easy while others were complex and challenging. I learned some new piecing techniques and really improved my foundation piecing skills.  It was great to be working with a group of people--it kept me working steadily. 

I finished up the blocks during March 2014. Here's a my blog post about the completed blocks.  So that was 16 months ago!  Where's the quilt?

It turned out that quilting this sampler quilt was more challenging than piecing the blocks!  I didn't start the quilting until this past winter.  I decided to quilt the white negative space in each block first.  It is the one unifying element in all the blocks.   

With flowers in the focus fabrics in the quilt, I chose to quilt flowers into the white spaces. There are lots of stylized roses, a chrysanthemum, generic flowers and some leaf patterns.  All that detailed quilting took a lot of time.  One day, when my bobbin ran out of thread I put it away-- two and a half blocks from finishing the floral quilting. 

I also had no idea how I was going to finish quilting these blocks.  Because it is a sampler quilt, no two blocks are the same.  Each block needed to have a unique quilting design.  It felt daunting, so I left the quilt and worked on other projects.

Then I found the resource I needed to get me back to the sewing machine: Angela Waters book, Shape by Shape Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters.  Angela suggests designs to fill in squares, circles, triangles and diamonds. I got some great ideas from the blocks in the book. Angela's quilting designs typically are much more dense than my quilting style so I none of my blocks look like hers.  But seeing what she did was really helpful.

These photos are three of my completed blocks.  The quilt should be done soon!  Finally!!

Quilting: Walking Foot vs. Free motion to create a wood grain effect

The quilt I've been working on this week has 9 fence posts in the design.  I've done wood grain before with a round knot.  But I saw a different intrepretation of wood grain in a quilting design in the book, Free-Motion Quilting for Beginners, and those who think they can't, by Molly Hanson.  So I decided to try her more oblong and pointy type of design.  

Wood grain quilting with a walking foot

I used the walking foot to quilt the first fence post of the day.  I figured that would work well with the long, slightly wavy lines of the wood grain.  With knot is so linear and pointed that looked feasible too.  It did work, but I had to stop and rotate the quilt around a number of times to create the knot effect.

Quilting a wood grain pattern with free-motion quilting

I realized that if I switched over to free-motion quilting, I could change the direction of my stitching, rather than rotating the whole quilt when I needed to fill in a tight space. This a fence post quilted with free-motion quilting. 

It was a lot easier to create the knots in the wood using free-motion quilting.  The free-motion knots are less pointy, a product of my brain and gross motor muscle memory, but I think I like them more.

I did rotate the quilt at either end of the fence posts when I was stitching the long wavy lines of wood grain. 

Both methods definitely work.  The the free-motion design which I stitched more spontanoesly was much easier and more fun to do.  

The bottom line: use the technique that works best for you and your skill level and that's the most fun!

Quilting Feathers: Never say "Never"!

Never!  I was convinced I would never, ever, quilt feathers.  I'd tried.  They were always warped looking. Besides, with so many other options for quilting designs, who needs feathers?  

But then I took Angela Walter's great course Machine Quilting--Small Changes on Craftsy.  Angela explain that feathers really are just heart shapes...and they don't have to be perfect to look great. Thanks Angela!!  I still wasn't planning to use this information.  But I'm working on my Bird Economy Block quilt with alternating chain blocks with lots of negative space. Birds--they need feathers!  And you know, Angela is absolutely correct.  Feathers aren't that hard to quilt and they do look great even when they aren't perfect.  

Quilting a feather sequence, left to right.  Note the heart shape at the bottom of 3rd feather

One of my great quilting tools is my Fisher-Price Doodle Pro.  Using this erasable tablet you can practice your quilting designs before you start to sew.  If you hold the stylus with a closed fist, rather than your fingers, your brain will develop muscle memory that is similar to the way hands move fabric under the needle for free motion quilting. It really does work.

The photo on the Doodle Pro above illustrates how I stitched out my feathers.  

Here is a feather being stitched on the machine.   

Quilting a Feather

On the left side of the photo at the top of this post, note that my stitching moved from the top of a feather into a meander stitch in the adjacent 4 patch block.  I was able to quilt about 1/3 of the blocks without having stop. 

This was my first attempt to quilt feathers. Do my feathers all have perfect heart shapes?  No. But The overall effect is great.  I'm really happy with the results!