some more quilts

Hey there! Here are some more quilts I finished recently. This wonderfully sweet quilt I custom quilted all free hand. Not a stitch of computer. Can I tell you how much faster it is to hand guide than it is to plop in all those designs and stand by to wait for the machine to quilt them out for me?

There was some really fun dimensional piecing in this quilt that made the quilting something I really had to think about. The client wanted the folded bits to pop out. so I just quilted around them.

Next up is this doggy quilt. The center part is a panel that the client wanted custom quilted so it looked pieced. This quilt is all hand guided too.

I traced around all the dogs with the long arm and did some fun quilting in the parts we wanted to look pieced.

In the border I quilted dog words "woof", "yip", "Grrrrr" "Bark". I couldn't think of any more word sounds so that is what I went with.

Now the next two quilts are all custom computer quilted. They took ages. And in a way sucked my creative mind dry. I think while I was quilting them I was also painting garish colored Chicken portraits and trying my best to learn to knit toe up socks. I gave up on the socks. But the hen portraits look good.

The blocks in this quilt were made by my clients great Aunt years and years ago. Sorry about the cruddy pictures they don't do anything to showcase all the details.

And this top was done by the same lady's grandmother. I tell you what...there are some of the best little feedback prints in this Dresden plate quilt! I had to really hunt to find doubles.

She brought in pictures of how old Dresden Plate quilts had been hand quilted and she wanted me to quilt it similar.

And we had a photo shoot this morning before the terrible weather hit town. I am trying to get a good Head Shot for a book I have contributed to...but I almost never have my picture taken. I am always behind the camera taking pictures of others! Anyway I thought this one was pretty fun. Very Napoleonic wouldn't you say?

Orange peel quilt

 Hey there! I hope you are doing well. My parents are here in town visiting us for a bit. It has been very nice to have them here. My mom and I like to go wonder around antique stores. There is one in town that has a wonderful selection of old quilts and quilt tops. In the past I loved to go through them and admire all the tiny hand stitches and marvel at the patience of the lady (or maybe fella) who made the tops, but didn't get around to quilting them. Well, now that I have my long arm it is so easy to quilt these orphan quilt tops. My mom and I bought several of them. This is one of the tops. I paid $25 for it. I believe the pattern is named Orange peel. Isn't is fabulous? It is almost entirely old feed sacks and most of the white background parts are flour sacks. I think it is wonderful and I am so happy I found it.

 I quilted it pretty simply because I really wanted all that fabric to shine. The white backgrounds are quilt with a heavy echo.

 Each little piece was hand stitched to the next one. There is so much work in this top. I wonder what was happening in this persons life? Did she have a bunch of different projects going on at once like I tend to do? Or was she super organized and fought her way through it. It was a really clean old top, but I can't wait to wash it!

 I used the thinnest cotton batting (quilters Dream Cotton Batting in request weight) The back is a 200 thread count muslin.

As you can see it has a scallop edge. I made bias binding and was in the process of binding it by hand, but when my mom offered to do the binding if I would quilt one of her quilts, I said no problem!  What a treasure this quilt is. Thank you unknown piecer! I love this quilt.