Sue's grandmothers garden quilt.

Hello and a warm welcome quilt lovers,  I have a lovely treat for you today, Sue's eight-years-in-the-making-grandmothers-garden-quilt!

A few months back Sue contacted me to ask if I would quilt her beloved batik grandmothers garden quilt............of course I said yes, I had been watching her progress reports on her blog. So it was all arranged on her recent visit to New Zealand that we meet up for the first time. Even though I have already quilted another one of Sue's quilts - see here,  we had never met, only through our blogs and emails.
Sue was keen to have a New Zealand feel to the quilt, the black fabric is a Kiwiana fabric called "Moko", think swirls, punga fronds and ferns.

The 'Moko'-fern-feather is all free hand quilting, I did mark with chalk the spine to get nice curvature.
I used Glide thread in black. The 'pathways' around the flowers have been left un quilted as Sue didn't want dense quilting.

I thought of all my lovely readers and followers as I was quilting the last few flowers and got to thinking you might like to see how I quilted these flowers...........hubby to the rescue! Women are known for multi-tasking, but I haven't mastered quilting and videoing at the same time :-)

For the flowers I used a Gunold Variegated thread, this colour worked well over the rainbow of colours. The singular red toned hexagons I also used a variegated Gunold thread but this time in pinks and reds.

With a black/grey backing fabric and lots of black on the front, Sue wisely chose black batting.
Thank you Sue for letting me loose on your quilt!

Next a few photo's of my recent trip as a helper with a school Duke of Edinburgh  - sliver medals group in training for tramping Cape Reinga - Te Paki next year. A great bunch of kids learning life long skills.

A mock patient with a 'broken leg' being stretchered out!

Hunkering down in the long grass as the rain does it's thing! The lessons don't stop because it's raining.

Blindfolded -lesson you must know where everything is in your pack!

A fun few days away, now back to quilting...............lots of variety in the quilting pile! Thanks for stopping by.

What's off the machine and what's on the machine..............................

My super prolific quilt making customer Marcelle has a nice little pile of quilt tops in my 'to-be-quilted' cupboard all in order of when she needs them. Some are for me to quilt all-over-quilting designs (aka: edge to edge quilting) which I can slot in between the quilts that require custom quilting, others are needed as a baby is born, then Marcelle likes to gift the family a quilt. The following quilt is just that..........................................

Made for a baby boy, made from some lovely train border fabric and 4 1/2" squares. Doesn't it make you look at border fabric in a new way!

For the borders I simply quilted piano keys or picket fencing which looks like railway tracks. The squares are cross-hatched, all over Matlida's Own polyester batting and a lovely pieced backing.

                  Some of the pieces in the backing fabric are Thomas the Tank Engine!

Currently on the machine is another quilt of  Veron's..................Redwork stitchery.

Several weeks ago I finished the Scrappy Crossroads quilt that I will soon gift to one of my nieces. I have a few more of my quilt tops waiting to be quilted.

This is bound for another purple loving niece. It measures 68" x 80" it has fourteen thousand and forty 2" squares!  Matilda's Own polyester batting, Madeira AeroQuilt thread in purples, all over quilting : "Ribbon's & Roses" and a flange binding.

From time to time I like to make some small quilts to donate to Auckland's Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit. Robyn from Patchwork Passion kindly oversees the distribution of these.

They are measuring around 20" x 24". I even pieced a couple on my long arm machine, similar to this method, although I don't have a computerised machine, it still works a treat!

 They do need slightly larger ones to go on top of the incubators, so that might be the next size I will make.

Three quilts.....................

Hello readers, if you have been watching on Quiltmekiwi's Facebook page you will have seen some sneak peeks of three different quilts. I am happy to now share them with you.
First is Juliet's stunning Zebra Quilt..........................

Juliet is a pattern designer from right here in New Zealand, this is another one of her original dynamic creations that I have been most fortunate to have the fun of quilting it for her.
I have quilted a few of Juliet's designs and enjoy them each time, there is a lot of ditch stitching that needs to take place, but once that tedious necessary job is over it's onto the fun stuff!!

I chose three different variegated threads for the three 'colour lots' for the eclectic mix of background fills. I used Superiors Fantastico, Madeira and Gunold 40 weight threads. Juliet chose cotton batting. This quilt measures 81" x 64", all foundation paper pieced.

 Because I had used rather 'organic' background fills I kept that flowing out to the border with an 'organic' piano key border. (my definition of organic is "not perfect, not even and very carefree"  quilting....I don't think that's the dictionaries definition :-)

                           
                              Juliet's backing was this beauty, quite a silky piece but lovely.

                                       
                                        Here it is trotting back home to Christchurch!

Thanks for letting me loose on another of your quilts Juliet! Please checkout Juliet's blog *here*.

Next is Jacki's Turning Twenty beauty. Jacki has been with me from my very beginning quilting days and trusts and knows I know she doesn't like "frilly dilly quilting" (her words!).

A simple loose stipple, ditch stitching that mustard sashing then piano keys on the border (straight this time no 'organics')

          Bamboo/cotton batting, Signature & Perma-core threads, the quilt measures 68" x 78".

Next is a rather pretty scrappy mostly hand pieced quilt made by Sue for her daughter's mother-in-law who lives in Ireland.

Soft flowing florals, the applique is hand done and pretty much most of the piecing is also completed by hand! It was intended to be hand quilted also but Sue ran out of steam and flushed me out to finish it off for her.

No dense background fills this time, much softer on the quilt and the wallet! I added to the vase of flowers with feathers, tendrils and leaves.

It slipped my mind to take final photo's of the appliqued hearts and vases as I did add some quilting to these at the very end of the quilting process. As my usual order I ditch stitched around the applique's and other places in need of this treatment before the fun artistic stuff starts, it's a bit like when you were a kid, if you ate your veges first then you were left with the best bits for last!

This quilt measures 55" x 55" and the batting is Sue's (cotton I think?) I used Glide threads in the yummy colours of "Linen" and "Peacock".
The central area and pieced border was treated with orange peel and cross-hatching.

The backing was Sue's own, a pretty floral. Thanks so much Sue, I hope this is well loved and cuddled in Ireland!

With those three out of studio what's next? Thanks for stopping by, always appreciated.

A panel quilt and a log cabin quilt.

Hello and welcome, today I share two quilts that I quilted for The Country Yard , both were launched yesterday at the shops New Years Launch, an annual event show casing what's new on offer at the shop.

First up is a quilt made from a panel by Kathy Schmitz called "Olde Towne" and the  coordinating fabric range "Sturbridge". I loaded the quilt top, cushion and cushion backing together on backing fabric and batting.

The quilt top and cushion back was quilted with an all over design called "Slick" and the cushion front had some custom quilting. I used Glide thread the colour Mocha.

See how that thread blends nicely without taking over from the quilt. The cushion was made from the three left over panels from the quilt.

Kerryn (owner of The Country Yard) had me make the cushion up and machine bind the cushion and quilt.

                       If you are interested this quilt is available as a kit from the shop.
Next is a lovely log cabin quilt. Who loves log cabin quilts? I am yet to make myself one, how about you, do you love them, have you made yourself one?

Before quilting.

Once the three 'ingredients' were loaded I began with feathering the creamy areas.............................

I used Gunold thread in a very soft variegation of creams and beige's. These wreaths of feathers help define the cream areas as well as showing off the on point setting.

             We couldn't have those borders feeling left out on all the featheriness could we!

After the feathering was finished I moved onto stitching in those ditches. Then the treatment of the dark 'logs' began.

The centre piece I quilted a creek key using Glide thread "Warm Grey 11'. The other dark logs I quilted straight lines that radiated out, again helping to keep that on point look crisp and clear.

The red sashing was happy with a nice little swirl design. This quilt is being offered as a class at The Country Yard, see their website for more details.

quilting finished!

Now I'm off to try one (or maybe two ;-) orange & blueberry muffins I just pulled from the oven!