Claudia's Last Quilt

I am linking with Finished For Friday sponsored by litandlaundry .

Claudia from our Montrose quilt guild, gave me two quilt tops to longarm for her, one I finished for her before she lost her life so suddenly. That one was for her granddaughter, you can see it here.

The other is made up of nine hand embroidered nursery rhyme blocks that she had been working on for years. I don't know that it was for anyone in particular and Claudia told me "no rush Ros, just when you have time!".

After her sudden and sad death I decided that I needed to complete this, her last project and get it to her family.

I finished the quilting this week and plan to bind it and get it mailed to her family so they can enjoy it.

Finished For Friday

I am linking up with Finished For Friday.

Friday is the end of the work week for many and not just for those who work outside the home. The weekend can bring a more relaxed life, or a busier time for those with children and spouses and all kinds of extra activities.

Either way it's fun on Friday to celebrate what we have accomplished during the week!

Another of Andee's quilts came off the longarm and is ready to deliver to her on Saturday. It took me about two hours to "bury the tails" on this quilt after the quilting was done.

Custom quilting usually requires a lot of stops and starts leaving threads hanging - sometimes it's possible to simply snip some of them off, depending on the quilting and the thread used.

It's quilted with leaf wreaths in each block and leaves trailing around the borders and in the sashings. It can be a challenge to decide just what design to use to compliment the piecing but the leaf motif came to mind fairly quickly as I pinned the quilt onto the leaders.

The batting is Quilter's Dream "Dream Angel", genetically engineered to be non- flammable, lovely to quilt and it drapes nicely. The threads I used are SewFine on top and Bottom Line in the bobbin, both by Superior Thread company.

I prefer the time consuming method of threading the tails back into the quilt "sandwich", it's neater and more secure. There were a lot of thread tails on this quilt which is why it took me two hours!

Daniel's Flag Quilt Top

Today I am linking up with Finished For Friday , Lush Friday, and Sew-n-tell


Whew, another top ready for the LA. I have a plan for quilting several tops next week - in between watching the beautiful baby Matthew, that is. I want to quilt this fairly closely, it has to stand up to the wear and tear of a five year old boy - this quilt is for a great nephew in Boston. It's larger than it looks in the photo, 80"x 92" and should be perfect for his twin bed and I have a few bits of fabric left so I might even make a pillow case or two.

Finished For Friday

Quilts completed this week

Client quilt,

with all-over floral design and echo quilting in the applique blocks.

The back, a plain muslin.

Home Of the Brave Civil War Replica for a bereaved military family

And the back.........

Quilt Of Valor for a Wounded Warrior, quilted with freehand leaves and vines....

the pieced backing...........

makes the other side interesting too.

And this QOV in patriotic colors.........

quilted with a freehand square spiral design.

I have one more QOV top here to quilt but it's going to have to wait a little longer.

Finished For Friday, Wedding Gift

Litandlaundry hosts Finished For Friday!

The wedding gift quilt for M and L is done and gone off to it's new home.

Quilted with meandering feathers.

The backing.

Finished For Friday, Donna's QOV

June at Quilts Of Valor maintains a list of longarmers who will quilt tops made by others for our wounded warriors. Most of the year I sign up to do two a month, sometimes I get more if I have time to fit them in. June pairs up quilters and toppers, this month I got lucky and my assigned partner is right here in town so we are saving about $20 on postage that we can better use for more supplies. Donna's friend dropped off the quilt top on Tuesday and I have it "Finished For Friday".

Litandlaundry is hostess for FFF and you can find on her blog a list of other productive and crafty bloggers.

This is Field and Furrows, one of many settings for the Log Cabin block, which came into prominence in the 19th. century after the Civil War and is thought to represent the log cabins built by the settlers heading west. This a scrappy version, Log Cabin quilts are perfect for scrap use, just divide your scraps into lights and darks and you can easily produce a very effective pattern.

I couldn't decide what to quilt on it so I resorted to the ever popular feathers meandered all over.

Muslin backing shows up the quilting very well, but most solids will work if you want to see detail of the quilting.

When quilting the feathers randomly it isn't necessary to keep the size consistent in fact I think it's more interesting to vary the size of the feathers.

I continue to experiment with lighting for quilt photography, the lighting is the big issue- do you strive for accuracy in color over clarity of quilting or the other way around? And I am sure you can do both with the right camera and lighting conditions-I am obviously not there yet, I need to find that tutorial!

Finished For Friday

Yesterday I put this sweet little girl's quilt on the LA to try and get it done today before we head off for another week of snow with the GS's and a friend.

I had removed the last quilt and decided when I looked at the tops awaiting quilting that I wouldn't put on another and have to leave it half quilted. But then I got Andee's quilt and it was just the right size to get done today so I got a good start on it last night and just now finished it- BJ will deliver it for me tomorrow at the AZ. Quilt Show.

The pics. turned out different colors because the first I took with the flash and the second without. The color is more like the first pic, pink, but brighter. That's why it's good to take your quilt pics in natural daylight you get truer color but not sunlight, that can wash out the colors too . Of course if you have a fancy camera and/or great photo software skills you can overcome all those issues! Me, I am pretty much a point and shoot!

This quilt top is all batiks but the backing is not. I know some quilters have problems with skipped stitches and other issues on batik quilts but I am fortunate with the A-1 machine to be able to get them done usually without any issues and this one was no exception. Occasionally I have encountered some thread breakage when both top and backing were batik, I think because those particular fabrics were especially dense. On one Kaffe Fasset quilt I had trouble every time I encountered two particular fabrics and I decided that they were much tighter weave, so I tried to slow down and quilt as little as possible in those areas!

I quilted Andee's with that beautiful King Tut variegated thread from Superior, it's the best thread, and about the most expensive quilting thread, I wince when I order it!

The backing is a cute girly print, the bobbin thread is Superior Bottom Line that works so well when you don't want obvious stitching to show, I used a medium pink.

So it is finished for Friday and you can see some other bloggers finishes at Lit And Laundry

Finished For Friday, Angela's Schnibbles Quilt

I have two of Angela's Schnibble's quilts to longarm and here is the first. It will make a cute table topper [maybe for Valentine's] or a wall hanging.

Pink and brown are so retro sweet, I wonder what Angela will do with it?

You can check out other Friday Finishes at Litandlaundry.