Bright Swatch Quilt

I have definitely made the shift to more modern/contemporary quilts.  They are such fun to make!

A while back, I ordered fabric and several  charm packs  from Connecting Threads.  I really love their Quilter's Candy Basic fabrics (several are on sale now), and I used a snip of each fabric to make a swatch book, so I'd know exactly what the colors are.  But, I couldn't decide what to do with all those leftover charms!  I blogged about the swatch book and my first quilt attempt here.

There were SO many different colors.  I tried sewing the squares randomly together, and that didn't work, so I tried the disappearing nine patch and liked the result.  This Bright Swatch Quilt is 40" x 45", has grey binding and backing, and  is quilted in a nested oval design that I have no idea the name of!

This will probably be a donation quilt. I make quilts for the Quilts For Kids charity organization, I love the idea that a child in the hospital will get this cheerful quilt!  I belong to the McGee's Crossroads group.

Mary

Day in Downtown Arts & Crafts Festival Oct 26

If you are going to be in the Fuquay-Varina, NC area, stop by the "Day in Downtown" An Arts & Crafts Festival on Main Street

My quilts and other items will be for sale at Torrey Hill Inc, Handmade Arts & Crafts at 216 S Main Street.

Here are a few of my items you may see there.

Day in Downtown

Saturday, October 26th from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Main Street in Historic Downtown Fuquay, NC.  

If you can't come to the festival, please visit my Etsy shop!

Mary

Wedding Dress Quilt Finished!

The Donna Miller Wedding Dress Quilt is finished. It was such fun to make, and I love the way it turned out.

After de-constructing the dress and designing the quilt, I drew out the quilting pattern for the large center panel, using the mirror technique I blogged about here.

Then I sewed the top without the outer ruffle, and loaded it on my frame.  I machine quilted the pattern in white, off-white, tan/gold, light pink, and dusty pink threads.  Lots of "scribbling" made the feathers really stand out.  After quilting, I attached the ruffle and binding (on the back).

These quilts are never the same, it's so interesting to see the dresses, and make this special quilt for the bride! These next pictures show more of the detail and quilting

Working on a Wedding Dress Quilt

I love making wedding dress quilts!  They aren't the easiest quilts I've ever made, but the end result is SO pretty.

Here's just a sneak peak of the latest wedding dress quilt I've been working on for Donna.  She didn't want just a white quilt, and requested dusty pink on it also.  It was a beautiful ruffled dress, so I had lots of lace ruffles to work with!

When I finish it, I'll post pictures of the entire quilt.  Stay tuned!

To see more of my Wedding Dress and Special Occasion Quilts, click on the tab at the top of the page, or click here

And again, I couldn't have done it without this Craftsy class - Thanks Cindy!

Mary

Found a Way to Organize my Acrylic Templates

I've been collecting acrylic templates for a while, and never had anywhere to store them that was easy to get to when I was quilting on my mid-arm/frame.

I had found this shoe tree at Walmart, and seen an idea to hang fat quarters from it, using paperclips and binder clips. Good idea, but didn't work for me.

So I decided to hang my templates (and some rulers) from the shoe tree and it worked! Using the same bent paper clips and binder clips (you can buy snap clips that work well too) I hung everything, and it looks great! It's sitting on a plastic drawer unit next to my frame, and I think it will work really well -- as long as I put the templates back after using them!!

I love creative solutions!

Mary