EOCQ-Gallery

"Morning Coffee" by Me!

I love doing Block of the Month (BOM) quilts. Each month for a year, you make a quilt blocks or two, so it's not as overwhelming as starting a huge quilt and saying "I can't work on anything else until this is done." Instead, you make you block, then put it away for a month. Next month you start another block or two.
This one started because I had gone to Corvallis, OR for a service call on a longarm machine. I can't get all the way to Corvallis, and not check out the local quilt shop, so off I go. Oh look! They are just starting their BOM program for the year! Since the shop is about 2 hours away from me by car, Quiltwork Patches was kind enough to mail me my fabric and directions each month.
A year of making 2 blocks each month goes by, and now I have all my blocks ready to go. I set them as suggested with narrow sashing strips and cornerstones, then added my own borders.
Since this was my quilt to play with, I really wanted the quilting to shine. I used wool batting, which gives it extra loft, then a tight background fill in the cream behind each star.

The stars are quilted with feathers, and each block has continuous curves in each piece.

Below is a photo of the back of the quilt, showing the quilting. My only regret is that I didn't take a photo before washing. Since the batting shrunk up when it was washed, I've lost the crispness and detail of the quilting that was there before washing. Live and learn.

The outer border is quilted with a fern leaf pattern to represent the leaves of the coffee bean plant.

The quilt is twin sized, and available for purchase. I haven't listed it on my quilts for sale site yet because I want to get better photos with a real camera as opposed to my Ipod. At least I know how to get the photos online from the Ipod, even if they aren't that great.

Better by the Dozen by Sharyle

You know, sometimes you have to have the right reason to finish a project. In Sharyle's case, it was her daughter's wedding.

Goodness, how many years ago did we piece these tops at Heart to Hand? All of us made the same 12 blocks, one per month, but then set them differently according to our choices from the options in the book. Also we got to choose our own fabrics. Sharyle did hers in batiks, and the rainbow effect is really lovely.

Sharyle chose a wool batting for this quilt, so very warm, but very light weight when it's on top of you. Wonderful to work with, and machine wash and dry. The thread is called "Colorburst", and it's perfect on this quilt, especially on the black border. Quilted with an edge to edge design called "Sunburst", and you can see one of the sun designs in the border below.

Best wishes to your daughter and her husband.

T-shirts for Shauri

A few weeks ago, I was out on a bike ride with my brother when my phone rang. I knew that I would never be able to get it out and answered before it went to voice mail, so I didn't even try. When we stopped for a snack break, I listened to this distraught woman telling me that she wanted to make a quilt out her daughter's t-shirts, but was overwhelmed at the prospect. So here we are, outside the Whiskey River Store (I have no idea how to get there, but we go past it often on bike rides outside of Canby), and I am trying to tell Shauri how to prep her shirts to get them ready for me, and make an appt. to meet up. A few days later, Shauri arrived at my studio with a bag of shirts that had been cut to size and mostly fused to the interfacing to make them stable or piecing and quilting. You can tell that she is much relieved to pass this project off to me, but still somewhat anxious about how it's really going to work.
We had many different sizes of shirts to work with but they all had to finish at 15" because of the sushi restaurant shirt. Got to have the city where it's from, that's where her daughter went to college. Shauri went off to get some extra fabric to add to build up the blocks as needed, also sashing strips and backing fabric. We did a sample layout, but she told me "I trust you." to make it work. After I had all the shirts built out to size, I sent her a photo from my phone, but she couldn't really see it well because of the angle. I use my guest room bed as my "design wall", and can't suspend myself from the ceiling to get a good shot of the quilts when they are on the bed. Thankfully, Shauri was able to come and preview the quilt top and gave her approval for my layout. Great because I'm excited to get this going further for her.
So now it is finished and ready for her to pick up, wrap and place under the tree. Since her daughter gave her the shirts, it's not really a surprise, but I still think that she'll be surprised and pleased to have those memories to wrap up in.

Christmas quilt and sham by Shannon

No pressure here, but this is the first quilt that Shannon has had someone else do her quilting for her. She usually quilts her own on her domestic sewing machine, but this was just a little too big for her to cope with.

Lovely Christmas prints in traditional red and green, and a modified Drunkards Path pattern without the curved piecing. Good thinking!

Quilted with "Alabaster" thread on top and a sage green in the bobbin. Difficult to tell in this photos, but the backing is actually a natural muslin color, so the green thread really shows up. The pattern is called "Tannenbaum". Perfect on this quilt because the trees go both up and down, so no "right side up". I hope that Shannon will bring me more quilts in the future, this was really fun to do. Many compliments on it while it was still on my machine and other customers would come to drop off their quilts.

Modern Bars by Rose

The piecing is quite simple on this quilt, but it makes a great effect. The solid colored bars are approximately 3 5/8" wide, by up to 19" long. These are then framed with 5/8" black bands. The bars are off set into the turquoise background with the top section being slightly narrower than the bottom. Rose asked that I quilt the bars by stitching in the ditch (SID) to outline the bars and also the black bands. The white center bars look like they are lit with electric lights, but that isn't the case. Just extra light reflecting.

To accentuate the bars section of the quilt, I mimicked the quilting that I had done around the bars in the open turquoise section

A closer view of the center bars.

Rose Winnie the Pooh and Popeye

Another one by Rose's husband. He stitched the appliques, and then Rose pieced the rest of the quilt.

"Rabbit" from the Winnie the Pooh books

"Eeyore" even has a real button holding his tail on, just like in the books.

"Popeye". Not from Winnie the Pooh, but still on the quilt. You can see some of the outline quilting that Rose started before becoming overwhelmed with the project.

MIckey and Minnie by Rose

Rose told me that her first husband had played with her new sewing machine one time while she was out of the house, and this was the result. Yes, this is all thread painting, meaning he made the design by making the stitches himself. This is not an embroidered design that you would download and have the sewing machine stitch out while you watched it.

Mickey and Minnie's faces are stitched too, they just don't show up so well on the white background fabric.

This Mickey is appliqued, but the "drawn" lines are stitched. So, pieces of fabric to make his face and ears, but the outline is all stitching. Even his pupils are stitched. By the way, this is on the back of the quilt.

Amish Garden by Beth

I love to hand quilt in addition to longarm quilting. I found this pattern in Quiltmaker Magazine and decided that I needed to do it. I also love to English Paper Piece, so this quilt is made entirely by hand. Hand pieced, hand quilted, hand sewn down binding. Okay, so I sewed the binding to the quilt top by machine, but that's all!

Quilted with wool batting so very fluffy, and light, and wonderful for hand quilting! I've even machine washed and dried this, and it didn't shrink up terribly. Just enough to make it wrinkly and extra warm.

I changed the pattern slightly from the original in the magazine. I already had 1.5 inch hexagons, so used those instead of the smaller size recommended. This gave me bigger blocks. Being quite tall, I also added rows to make it long enough for me to snuggle under. It's got to be long enough to wrap around my cold toes, and then tuck up and around your neck.

Each hexagon is outline quilted with a grey thread, but it mostly looks white on the quilt. When I chose the thread I wanted a little bit of contrast, but guess I should have gotten a bit more.

Toby's Napkin quilt

Our lovely dog, Toby, has a habit of using this ottoman as a napkin. As in, rubbing his face along it after he eats. Consequently, the sage green ottoman has gotten rather brown and dog food shaded on one side. So, I grabbed my fabrics, and a block and whipped out a "napkin" for him that can easily be thrown into the washer when it gets icky.
Now I have to confess. Math isn't my strong suit. Consequently, when I made it, the sides and top and bottom aren't the same length. You can't tell in the photo, but trust me. It made perfect sense when I had it laid out on the guest room floor though! Besides, all the leftover blocks made a lovely quilt top that will eventually be quilted up for charity.
By the way, the napkin works great!

Log Cabin stars

Another one by Michael. Log Cabin blocks with stars in the center. Frankly, I didn't realize how gorgeous this quilt was until I hung it up to take this photo. Quilted with "Log Cabin" pantograph.

Christmas Table Topper

I've asked it before, but Michael when do you sleep? Here is a table topper that he made for Christmas. Quilted with a gold metallic thread from Superior threads, and a pantograph called Tannenbaum