Modern Amish Sampler

A very last-minute submission of my Modern Amish Sampler to The Blogger's Fall Quilt Festival in the home machine quilt category.  This is a quilt that I planned to make for several years to hang over my sister's fireplace -- finally finishing it in the Spring of this year.

Modern-Amish Sampler

back side

Some Details:
It started with a fabric bundle from Cherrywood Fabrics and a pattern called Marmalade & Jam purchased at a quilt show.  I used my own color scheme and ended up having to add various other fabrics to complete the quilt.  I used wool batting, which is why the quilt is so densely quilted.  I had no idea how "puffy" my stitching looked so I kept on adding thread until I right to me.

The back is improv-pieced with log cabin blocks k (my own design).

Quilt is faced instead of bound.

I use a Babylock domestic sewing machine for all of my quilts for both piecing and quilting.  I prefer to free-motion quilt organic-type shapes instead of using templates or pre-marking my quilt tops.  The open feather design featured here is one of my favorite designs to quilt. 

Quilting detail -- before binding

Free motion quilting in progress

One of my favorite spots

"Modeling" the finished top

Cherrywood fabric bundles

Pattern & fabrics

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One final picture showing the quilt hanging over my sister's fireplace!

Modern Amish Quilt

Thanks for stopping by!

Claudia

Easy Curves Wall Quilt

Hello everyone!  I'm back from the dead just in time for Halloween and reviving the blog so I can enter my newest quilt in the Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side in the wall quilt category.

Easy Curves Quilt

I had so much fun making this quilt.

in progress

 In September I took a class through my guild, the SFQG (San Francisco Quilt Guild ) to learn how to piece "easy curves".  The technique involves taking 2 strips of fabric about 6" wide (selvage to selvage), stacking them FACE UP, securing with pins and then free cutting curves with a rotary cutter. Swap the top and bottom fabric pieces and the curves are sewn together without pins.  It's not too terribly difficult but some of my strips ended up so out of kilter that I couldn't square them up. I cut some of the worst ones into pieces and put together the quilt improvisationally.  I think the cut up strips add interest to the overall design.

The back:

Easy Curves Quilt

I quilted different free-motion quilting patterns in each strip.  I used two different Sulky rayon threads:  variegated grey/white and variegated teal.

Thanks for visiting Armchairquilter and I hope to see you here again in the future.  I will probably only be blogging occasionally so you can be alerted of updates via Bloglovin'.  And don't forget to check out all of the wonderful quilts @ Amy's Creative Side.

----Claudia

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--Claudia

Quilting progress and hexies

I've been working on free motion quilting on my Liberty Fields quilt (pattern by Material Obsession):

And it's hard going! I usually love FMQ but this quilt is large and because the blocks are on point and I wanted to stabilize it by stitching in the ditch around each block, it's been a biitch getting the quilt thru my machine.  I'm now on to quilting swirly shapes on the white background fabric and my darning foot keeps on getting caught up on the applique and embroidery AND I'm also outlining the star shapes, freehand, which isn't so easy.

Hmmm, I wonder why this particular quilt seems like so much trouble?  Hopefully all of the hard work will pay off in the end.  I'm not even halfway through, but with a 3 day weekend right around the corner, I hope to make some significant progress to share with y'all soon.

My flickr friend Melinda (Quirky Granola Girl) has inspired me to make some new hexagons.  On Sunday, I pulled my old hexagon project out and before long I had these:

and by this morning, my pile had grown considerably.

Fun, huh?  Definitely addictive.

'Bye 2012, Bring on 2013

Looking back at 2012, it wasn't a hugely productive year in quilts for me.  Most of the year was spent piecing my Farmer's Wife Quilt.  I guess one could say this was a good year for perseverance more than anything.  Here is the completed top in all it's glory:

Now all I need to do is win the lottery so I can afford to by about 9-10 yards of backing fabric!

So sorry it's been so quiet on my blog as of yet.  I'm always completely overwhelmed with the onset of the holidays.  It's a very busy period at work as well in addition to the usual holiday stuff.  I took 2 weeks off work to coincide with the kids' school break and once we were over the Christmas "hump", I've had a wonderful time relaxing and doing not a lot of anything (i.e., catching up on Downton Abbey and Breaking Bad).  I've also spent some time sewing.  I finished an old WIP that started off as a Flickr sewing bee.

I quilted with an all over meander in the background, an orange peel design and pebbles quilting on the stars and a natural open feather pattern in the borders.

I'm not sure why this photo looks so blurry, but you can see the original image on flickr.  I had fun experimenting with different free motion stitches.  I used Superior Threads Brights for the green border and a polyester embroidery thread for the rest of the quilt.

This is what happens when I go fabric shopping with my daughter.  She HAD to have the mustache print fabric and I suggested we make a case for the ipad.  The tutorial is from One Shabby Chick.  It's an easy project and came together quickly.

Wishing all of my readers a happy and healthy New Year!  Happy sewing!!!