Quilting Again

It feels good to be quilting again after my vacation. This first quilt is for a friend who lives back east, I’m quilting it using a technique by Suzanne Early called Meandering Magic

Tomorrow, I need to finish this so I can start a quilt that will hang in a booth at the West Coast “Houston” quilt show that is happening later this month down in Long Beach, CA.

After that, I hope to work on a special project for myself- my friend and talented quilt designer/piecer, Barbara Kiehn, pieced a quilt for me that we will eventually show later this year. My plan is to make this my best quilting effort to date.

Happy Quilting, Carla

PS: Don’t miss the season premiere of Project Runway happening on Wednesday night. This is one of my favorite shows, I will admit. Who else love this show?

How to quilt Various Feathers, etc.

Want to make lovely feather motifs like this one?

I decided to write  a simple “how-to” for quilting basic feather types.  This post is also for the students in my class yesterday who had questions about simple feathers, “continuous curve” quilting, and how I would quilt a wedding ring quilt.  If you scroll down to the bottom of the post, you will see the difference between a feathered “flurry” quilt and a “feathered meander.”

Here is my simple tutorial for drawing and quilting freehand feathers:

Ever struggle with your feather shape?  Here is a helpful page to print out and practice. HInt- if you print it out and laminate the page, you can practice with dry erase pens over and over:

Here’s my how-to for Heirloom Feathers:

Here is the order for the Continuous Curve quilting in a 9-patch:

I also mentioned the Wedding ring quilt on my table at the moment- and how I take photos of the quilt and send suggestions to the friend who owns it. Suzie, this is relevant for you since you will be teaching a Wedding Ring class. Here are the 4 suggestions I drew for this friend:

The first two examples are stencil inspiration, the last two are my own drawings and ideas. My friend, the quilt’s owner picked #2, by the way, so I am busy implementing it. See the finished quilt here:

(Click on for larger view)

I also mentioned a technique called, “The Flurry,” a design created by my good pal, Jamie Wallen (thanks Jamie!). Flurrying a quilt is fast when you have the design down pat. Here is what is looks like quilted on a quilt:

If I were to draw it out, it would look like this:

Here is what Megan Best spine method looks like used on a quilt:

and the back:

I do hope this is helpful for all you beginning quilting students our there! Happy Quilting!

Regards, Carla

PS: Here is the link for the finished wedding ring quilt shown above. Some other great posts about quilting are shown here and here.