A stitchers Garden and meet Dimples and Harry.

As a professional quilter I can never complain about enduring a boring job, every quilt is different, from size to design, texture to what quilting my customer would like.

At the end of last year Chris gave me her 'Stitchers Garden' quilt, designed by Lynda Howell. Chris made this quilt through a class at The Apple Basket to learn the different features of her Phaff machine. As classes go this was a long ongoing 18 months long!

One of the challenges I faced with this beautiful quilt was the applique blocks have already been quilted, the backgrounds have a semi lofty stabilizer on the back side and each background has it's own 'quilting'. You will notice the above block shows wavy pin tucking, so this was my challenge, I was reluctant to do any quilting in the background. Chris agreed and we decided to just quilt around the applique's, some of these had to been quilted 1/4" away as the decorative stitching protruded past the applique shapes.

The applique background fabrics were a lovely linen, many of the other fabrics had a silver overlay.

I enjoyed 'dividing and conquering' one of the pieced borders, just to simply add another level of interest.

There is just something so pleasing about feathers on a quilt.

Straight lines never go a miss either.

Thank you so much Chris for trusting me to custom quilt  your beautiful quilt. This will not be the last you see of this design because I got given another quilt from the same class!

Last blog post I put a sneaky peek photo of a present I made for a very special who celebrated her birthday yesterday, as yesterday is over I can now share......................................Meet Dimples and Harry.

Dimples (the doll) and Harry (the rabbit) were designed by Kerry Gillespie, over at My Favourite Things. Dimples sports and linen shift and dress along with some antique buttons, Harry.............the poor fella is wearing only a name tag hanging around his neck! Notice the name tag is discreetly giving him some privacy.

I miss my special friend, I miss popping into her home for a cuppa and a natter, someone who cares for me and I for her. So when her birthday was looming and I remembered I had this pattern I knew she would love it.

There is a personal joke between her and me, you see the very first time I went to visit her at her home I was so shocked to see her hanging out her kitchen window with a rifle shooting rabbits! I saw another side to my friend one that made me laugh and feel sorry for the bunnies eating the fresh veges in her garden. Anyway when I returned home and told my husband about my visit to my new friends home he started calling her 'Gunslinger'!! So the theme of bunnies remains even though our friendship is a long distance one. Happy birthday Megan!

Here in New Zealand is a long weekend as Friday was Waitangi day. So I decided to continue with the Block of the Month I am making as a sample for The Country Yard. Still only sneak peeks until AFTER  the shops New Years Launch on 7th March.

I hope your weekend is going well, with lots of creativity and joy, thanks so much for taking the time to stop by.