Home and Heart Redwork Quilt....................................

Hi there quilt lovers, I have another beautiful quilt to share with you today as well as two cushion tops with funky 'carnival' type lettering! First lets start with Veron's Home and Heart redwork quilt.

This is a Bird Brain Design that Veron decided to stitch out in 'Hugs & Kisses' Cottage Garden Thread Veron requested cross hatching over her stitcheries which I do with a fine thread that blends and gives texture.

                       The quilt measures: 73" x 73" and as usual is beautifully executed.
Veron likes to give me creative licence for the quilting but I do like to touch base from time to time.
Hopefully you can see in the following photo's the swirl quilting I completed on the red and cream 'sashing' fabric, not much was really going to show on this fabric, so my aim was to create texture.

All the cream fabric, including the one used for the stitchery blocks have a beautiful pearly finish. The border was the perfect place to nestle in some feathers! The batting is Matilda's Own Polyester.

Next are two fun and funky cushion tops. Kerryn made these as shop samples for The Country Yard.
I quilted the edges of the applique lettering instead of the edges having blanket stitch.

     The two cushions were loaded on my machine together on the same backing fabric and batting.

I attempted videoing my quilting process of these swirls with a fit of giggles! I have decided yes women can multi task, but Leeanne CANNOT video AND quilt at the same time! You will have to settle for the photo's.............perhaps Simon can be trained to video??
Here's one letter before the quilting......................................

And after the quilting...............................................

Thank you Veron and Kerryn!

Circles, pebbles & gingerbread kisses!

                  The long awaited sharing of the stunning black clamshell beauty is over!

True to form I have shared sneak peeks over at Facebook, sometimes it takes several days or a week or so to show you all of the quilt, this is due to the quilt being returned to it's maker.
This large (85" x 85") stunning quilt was made by Marilyn. Marilyn sure makes some lovely class samples! Marilyn's brief to me was to stitch in the ditches around the clam shells, but no quilting ON the clam shells. Then for the border Marilyn wanted circles and pebbles using a variegated thread. Sadly the photo's don't show up the fabulous thread, but I did take a photo of the spool of thread! From there you will have to trust me that the thread is lovely, it works so well with all the colours in the clam shells.

I worked at getting a variety of circular designs, each slightly different. When you are quilting on a domestic machine ( I used my Bernina 440 for over 6yrs before purchasing my long arm machine) you could easily see what you had already quilted. On a long arm machine you need to roll the quilt back and forth, even then you can only see approximately 26 inches of the quilt at one time, so I took plenty of photo's as my guide.

         Some circle designs took on a life of their own! Like this one, a bit like a face I thought?

In the background of the circles I quilted what felt like to me was 'movement'. Simple back and forth meandering, it feels like slow moving water, or moon light.

Marilyn's Clam shells have an explosion of  fascinating designs, piecing and embroideries..............................

Marilyn decided on a black batting which was a wise choice as we can run the risk that when the quilt front and backing are black, white batting's can 'beard' through. Marilyn pieced a pretty backing from a William Morris fabric framed with a beige then black solid fabrics.

If you would like to take classes with Marilyn please contact her through her website *here*.

By the way, Simon was on hand when the photographing took place.......................................

Next to share with you is Kerryn's delightful 'Christmas Inspirational Stitchery Quilt'. Made using Michelle Ridgway's Gingerbread stitchery booklet, Anni Down's " Under the Mistletoe" fabric,   Cottage Garden and Aurifil threads.

The Country Yard has put together inspirational packs which include fabrics, thread and Michelle's booklet to get you spirited along on the Christmas journey!

Kerryn adores her stitcheries to have cross hatching, to secure, to add extra texture all without taking away from her lovely stitching. For these times I always use a very fine thread.

My collection of Glide threads are growing, I have many threads I love and use often, they work well through my machine, life is too short to be fussing with 'headache' threads!

The sun going down photo, see the textures...................a pretty ribbon border on pretty fabrics!

Thank you for stopping by, enjoy the week to come.

Christmas.....really???

Hello readers and friends, today's first sprinkling of eye candy is a small Christmas wall hanging I made as a sample for The Country Yard. It's called Snow Buddies by Bird Brain Designs.

I used Cottage Garden Thread ~ 'Hugs & Kisses' for the snowmen and women and two different Lynette Anderson fabrics from two of her ranges. The pattern calls for these cute stitcheries to be made into oval tree decorations, but I decided on a wall hanging instead.

Still on the Christmas theme...............................

A design by Susan Martin ~ "Suzn Quilts" called A Merry Christmas to you. Lots of iddy biddy SID. Kerryn is a fan of cross hatching over her stitcheries and asked for this once again.

Lots of cute little Dresdens! Star blocks, nine patch blocks and pinwheel blocks also came in the size small!

Piecing, applique, stitching makes for a nice mix. The quilt measures 47" x 44" a nice wall hanging size for next Christmas, unless of course you are a super fast quilt maker, then you could have it made for this Christmas! Available as a Block of the Month or as a kit from The Country Yard.

Next is a quilt Janette made using all her beachy fabrics then asked me to quilt 'Marmalade' an all over design (edge to edge).

Janette loved the idea of having a picnic quilt to be kept in the car, great for a stop at the beach with fish & chips for dinner on a summer evening.

I remembered to take a photo of the scrummy thread I used, Fantastico (I like to say that with an Italian accent, it sounds more exotic!)  called 'playhouse'.

Yesterday morning out walking I took another photo of my new neighbour, soooooo cute! Back soon with more quilts and quilting to share.