Working on a Wedding Dress Quilt

Haven't posted in a while, I've been busy working on my latest Wedding Dress Quilt.  Here are a few in-progress shots.  The wedding dress had a pleated bodice, and lots of ruffles in the skirt.  The lining was satin.  It's a light ivory color. I was asked to use turquoise in the quilt, that was one of the wedding colors, so the inner border design and the circular stippling in the center are turquoise.

I de-constructed the dress, and designed the pattern for the quilt.  It has a center diamond, which will have a quilted motif, pleated corner squares, and an inner and outer border.  In between the borders will be several rows of ruffles.

Here's an in-progress shot showing the quilting in the center, start of the pleating, and the first border.  Most of the quilt is satin, the ruffles are organza, and I'll put organza over the pleated areas.

The border wasn't showing up well, so I decided to thread 2 threads through my machine (and it worked!) and sew over the border design again, it really shows up well now.  I sewed a feather design on the outer border, then sewed on the ruffles, and I'm in the process of binding it now.  

I'll post again when it's finished!

To see some of my other Wedding Dress Quilts, click on the Wedding/Special Occasion Quilts link at the top of the blog, or my Etsy store, where I do custom orders.

Mary

Do You Zentangle?

Do you Zentangle?  I just started doing this, and it's a lot of fun.  It's somewhere between doodling and drawing quilting designs.  A great way to practice quilting designs before you stitch them on fabric.

Here's one I drew:

There are lots of sites and pictures on the web about this technique...try it out and let me know what you think!

Mary

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

2013 Recap

This  has been a busy year!  I'm so lucky to be able to quilt full time, I've been able to get lots of quilts made this year!  Here's a recap of my quilts, the dates are the months when the quilts were finished:

January - April - Five quilts for my uncle's log cabin in the mountains.