Wedding Patchwork Quilt

What a difference a border (or two) makes. When I took the finished top over to The Quilting Loft to meet with the customer, I knew it wasn't large enough to fit onto a queen sized bed but there wasn't any material left to make it bigger. The boarder was going to need to be 10" or more to make the quilt the right size.

Fortunately, Getting to pick out material at The Loft presents endless solutions. It was fun to watch the owner of this patchwork piece pull bolts of material off the shelf and put them back. It did take bit of time but she selected a wonderful yellow and cream flower print for both the border and the back. To extend the border, we decided to add a round of the grey that we used in the top.

Although this isn't my style, I like how the borders pulled everything together and made the quilt look like it was planned to be this way all along.

Now that it is done (front and back), we'll hook up with the Long-arm quilter and get it in the queue. Can't wait to see what quilt design the customer selects.

Top with borders

Top with borders

Back and Border

Lava Meets Sky

This is a quilt I put on my Beautiful Material board because I really liked the look of it but had no desire to actually make it. Good lesson: careful what you put on Pinterest. A customer might just fall in love with it and ask you to make one.

I got the material the other day - two fat quarter bundles of solids from Robert Kaufman. Beautiful stuff. The customer wants the material pre washed - which is a first for me. And, she isn't fond of some of the colors in the bundles. So I sorted out the ones she wants to use, pinned the bundles together and washed them. It will take a bit of time to get them all ironed but once that's done, I'll start cutting.

This is a deceptive pattern. It is just 5" squares put into half-triangles. The interesting task is figuring out which two colors to put together to come out with the flow that is represented in the original quilt.

Should be interesting.

Miscellaneous projects

The Wedding Guest quilt is off to the Long-arm quilter. We were very fortunate to get to work with Angie (the owner of the Quilting Loft) when the customer and I met to make the quilting decisions. Angie recommended a customized quilt design rather than using one of the computerized one. This way, she can quilt around the writing. She's going to do a leaf design to mirror the design that's in the signature blocks. The thread is a variegated cream/wheat that will show up once in a while but mostly it will just add texture. It will take a while for it to be done but it will definitely be worth it.

The Manor Grown quilt is now ready for the Long-arm. I know I said I was going to do the quilting my self but since then, I've gotten a couple payments from customers so I'm going to let the professionals do the quilting. I got lucky and found a beautiful piece of material for the back. It was a piece left over from Christmas but isn't a real Christmas'ie pattern. It will be a great back for this one. What you can't see in the pictures it the slight sparkle this material has to it - great stuff for only $6 a yard.