Quilts Made in 2020

I wanted to post these quilts I made in 2020. I took a break from making Wedding Dress Quilts to make some quilts for myself, and Christmas gifts.

Purple Flowers was made from an embroidered tablecloth, on a purple cotton backing, and

machine quilted.

Purple Flowers

I wanted to try a mandala whole cloth quilt, and designed and quilted this one in white thread on a blue cotton background.

Blue Mandala

This whole cloth quilt was made from a Dream Big panel by Hoffman, and quilted in a feather pattern.

Big Dreams

Ruth wanted a quilt with penguins for a Christmas present, this panel with two blue borders added was perfect.

Penguins for Ruth

Christmas barnyard animals for Matt and Ashley.

Matt and Ashley

I loved the design on this one, with the shadows making it three dimensional.  It used up a lot of scraps! This one was for me.

Floating Blocks

Sweet Dreams Wholecloth Quilt - Entered in Virtual Quilt Show

Sweet Dreams was inspired by some pictures I saw on the internet, I wanted to make a whole cloth quilt incorporating a dream catcher design, and have some fun being creative!

The quilt is made from a single piece of off-white satin, with wool batting and white cotton backing. I quilted a dream catcher in the center, hand beaded, with some thread painting. 

In the borders I created a design that echoed the feathers and dream catchers, along with a traditional feather design. The background areas were quilted in several background fill designs. Instead of a binding, I faced the quilt so that the design fills to the edge of the quilt.

The quilt is entered in the Virtual Quilt show, please take a look, and vote for your favorite (hopefully for my quilt!)

https://virtualquiltshow.com/portfolio/sweetdreams/

Bigger Green Whole Cloth Quilt!

At the end of last year, I finished (I thought) the Green Whole Cloth Quilt.  I blogged about the materials and design  here, I loved the color and design, but decided it just wasn't big enough.  Here is a picture of the original quilt.

Original Smaller Whole Cloth Quilt

So I carefully removed the binding, and added a 12" border, using the same fabrics, thread, etc.  Lots more heavy machine quilting, finished up the last stitching and binding last night!    I haven't finished blocking it yet, so there are a few places where it doesn't hang quite straight, but I couldn't wait to share it!!

Larger Green Whole Cloth Qult

The final quilt was 52" x 52" and I hung it in our bedroom, the green matches our "decor" perfectly!I'm so happy with this quilt now, and it looks beautiful hanging on the wall.

Here is a picture of the corner of the quilt, showing the detail.  I should have kept track of how many bobbins I used, so I'd know how much thread it in the quilt!

Green Whole Cloth Quilt - Color For a Change

Most of my Wedding Dress quilts are quilted in a whole cloth type design.  For a change, I decided to try a colored whole cloth wall hanging.  I used Dusty Jade Bella Solid fabric, and Connecting Threads Essential cotton and Essential Pro poly thread.  The "gold" color was thread painted with Taupe Esstential cotton thread. Auditioning the thread on the fabric was really helpful, I wouldn't have guessed that Taupe would look so gold.

I used the Mirror Technique again. I love this technique, I'm constantly drawing out new designs to see how they will look.

The hardest part for me is knowing when to stop...there's always more I could add.  But this is the finished wall hanging.

Here is a closer picture of the center and corner detail 

Really happy with how this wall hanging turned out.
Mary

White Wholecloth Quilt Finished! Help from The Quilt Show and Craftsy

Ever done a whole cloth quilt?  I thought this would be great fun, and a good sample of the work I can do on the wedding dress quilts that I make.   And I finished it!  

Before I show more pictures,  let me describe the process for making the quilt.

Several months ago, The Quilt Show had a series of videos by Sharon Schamber. After watching them, I went to work and designed the pattern for this quilt.  It's a fun creative process, you draw out 1/8 of the design, then copy to make 1/4 of the design (so everything is consistent).  Then enlarge, and mark on each section of the quilt.

But the actual quilting was just not working .. not enough contrast.  I just wasn't happy with it.  so I stopped quilting it.  

 

Then I took the Craftsy class Design It, Quilt It: Free-Form Techniques with Cindy Needham.  This was a really good class, the first few lessons covered the basics, a good review for me, and I got a few new tips.  Then the designing started!  After this class, I was able to finish the quilt, and look how it turned out!