Staggered bricks

I received this quilt on Saturday requesting that it be done by Tuesday. Thinking hubby would play his usual golf on Sunday morning, I loaded it planning a quiet Sunday morning quilting alas hubby did not play golf but entertained himself by starting to redo the guest bedroom.  I, in between serving him coffee, could finish the quilt.

This is another quilt made as a gift for someone who has to undergo a bone marrow transplant.  The quilter used brick shapes in a mood-lifting colour (this is what blue says to me) and asked their friends to write their names on some of the bricks.

Again, I did the ribbon design, not only being a gift but bone marrow transplant being the gift of new life.

Once the quilter fetched the quilt, we treated ourselves to a fish braai at a local restaurant, along with friends and the food was worth every cent of the asking price.

Another quilter sent a message on Sunday but I explained to her that I simply needed a break and will take two days off, not even going into my frame room which is exactly what I did.  Now, I am well rested and ready to go again.

Scrappy tiles in a window

By the time I got this quilt I was totally exhausted.  I’ve had continuous quilts to do for more than 3 weeks in a row.  As the one got off the frame, the next had to be put up. I don’t have domestic help, cooking and cleaning is all on me.  We’ve moved to a new house with its own set of pitfalls.  Hubby got a temporary job as a quality controller at the largest hospital in our country and his PA (which turned out to be me!!) has to type his weekly reports.  Then, our sold business is still not deregistered and also needs my attention as well as our trust account and personal finances.  In between all of this, I still have kids, grandkids and pets and all want their equal share of attention.

When this quilter, therefore, called for stitch in the ditch, it was a welcome change. 

Esther’s comfort

 The quilter made this quilt for a friend who recently lost her mom and used jelly rolls.  It was massive and towards the end, I had a hard time advancing it as my wrists do not seem to want to handle the heavy weight anymore.

I decided on a large-scale ribbon edge-to-edge because of the size of the quilt.

City Slicker

This turned out to be one of those quilts which attracted the attention of everyone passing my frame room.  The bold contrast between the black and bright colours excites most people.

The quilter will add another backing to this quilt to turn it into a duvet cover, so the backing colour need not match the top.

We selected the bubbles edge-to-edge motif to finish it up.

Sunset Sky

I think the fabric chosen for this quilt, represents the name perfectly.  A pity we have so many artificial lights in neighbourhoods, that one forgets to look at the natural sunset or it isn’t even visible.

With the densely printed fabric, dense quilting would have been a waste of time and money as it would hardly show up.  I basically selected 2 main areas for a bit of custom quilting and only did ditch stitching in the rest.

Starlight, starbright

When I opened the bag containing this quilt, it simply screamed Judy Madsen.  There were just no way loops, leaves, feathers, curls or any other motif would be suitable for this.  I dug up the quilts I did during my online course by Judy Madsen to refresh my memory but unlike Judy, I am not as anal about marking the whole quilt beforehand.  Once I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do in the border and sashing, it was all systems go starting with stitch in the ditch on all the seamlines first.  This allowed me to roll the quilt back and forth as I continue to find the ideal layout and stitching for each of the blocks.

The quilter gave me permission to play, it, unfortunately, did not come with all the creative ideas and I had to dig deep to find some kind of layout for each of the nine stars.  It went extremely slow, not the stitching…… the designs but all’s well that ends well.

These were the designs around the stars

Finally, after what felt like weeks, I had an end result.  I had a friend and her daughter (who spots a mistake or omission from a mile away) come over to check the final product and yes, the daughter did find an area I skipped.