Esther's Excellent Medallion

Hello and 'happy nearly mid week' time. We have had some crazy weather here in the winterless north. Hail the other night that turned our deck into a white winter wonderland! I was so excited!
Several times I have had to turn off and unplug my machine because of the thunderstorms, too scary for me to keep working my machine and possibly too risky.
Now I have an excellent quilt to share tonight, Esther's Medallion. Here's the photo I took when I took it out of the courier bag and lay it out.

Measuring 76" x 81" Esther wanted custom quilting and polyester batting. I emailed a few ideas through to Esther and we came up with a rough plan, she was happy for me to take over with what was going to look best for the quilt.

I quilted the swag border first then let the rest develop from there. Glide thread, Pro echo curve ruler, swag ruler, straight ruler were my guides the rest was free motion hand guided quilting.

When I created the diamonds on the inner border I was left with this strange shape that had me scratching my head for awhile wondering what to do with it?

But then I came up with just the right design.....................

Checkout the fabulous backing fabric...........................

I hope you enjoyed looking at Esther's lovely quilt. Here is a short 'swooping' video.

Thank you Esther and thanks to those you take the time to stop by.............
                                                Happy creative week!

Lesley and Lorraine's quilts

As I wait for yet another shower of rain to pass over so I can prune the last of my roses I remembered I had two quilts ready to share with you. First is Lesley's Kiwiana quilt called "Stripes and Four Patches" by Missouri Quilt Star

Measuring 73" x 84" Lesley wanted this quilt for her bed so she chose wool batting and an edge to edge design called "Rotorua" and also chose a nice blue backing fabric.

                        Isn't this quilt a great eye spy, snippets of kiwiana! Thank you Lesley.

Next is Lorraine's fun quilt made for one of her grandsons. This is an Amy Bradley design called 'Pirates'

                          Lorraine wanted light custom quilting and went with polyester batting.

This quilter did have fun with this quilt, although  there were times when I felt like she was being watched!

                                       Can you guess what Lorraine's grandson's name is??

Quilt backing spotlight moments......................................

                     Thank you Lorraine and Levi, lets hope you have many adventures together!
While I am sharing quilts made by people with names starting with "L" lets see one recently finished by me............................

A flashy photo - plenty of rain here lately so it's all inside photo's. This is the second scrappy medallion quilt I have made, the first one I gave away to charity, this one will also be gifted to a good cause.

It was a good chance to try out a new swirl. Swirls and feathers they have something in common - you can never have too many varieties! These are my plump swirls. Notice the larger centre to the swirl? Overall this gives a bobble effect to the quilt, quite pleasing.
Thank you for stopping by, I am ending this post with thoughts of the ugliness going on in USA and I like to imagine........................... while I prune the remainder of my roses.

One of my own....................

It's not often I finish one of my own quilts so I thought you might like to join me in celebration by reading this post about my recent finish. Started back in 2015.......................

That was my flimsy, so somewhat finished right? Well it sat tucked away with the label and pieced backing fabric until that magic day when I had time to quilt it in between paid quilting! A couple of weekends back I decided it was time to get this quilt really finished.

The Country Yard (where I used to work) often has mystery projects this was one such project. Those who participated were given a set of rules and a piece of fabric that had to be used in each 'round'. That piece of fabric was a tapemeasure print fabric by Sweetwater called 'Elementary'. I thought my stash of Kansas Troubles worked well together.

This was labour intensive quilting but I am really pleased with my efforts. I used two layers of batting which I have been wanting to try after reading time after time that my quilting idols in USA have been using so often. The results are pleasing, some extra texture...........and I love texture! Warm and Natural Cotton and Matilda's Own Wool batting as the top layer.

I decided to piece a backing starting with a panel then some other fabrics that worked in with the panel.

I made a flange binding which helps frame my quilt off nicely. So is my personal pile of quilts at zero? No! Will it ever be?............................

I am linking up with Linda and Julie for "Sew-Stitch-Snap-Share". If you want see the post I did about The Country Yard's sample of this medallion you can click *here* also if you fancy reading my progress from the start of my quilt click *here* and *here*. Thank you to Linda and Julie for the gentle push along by creating a fun link up.

Please keep popping back to my blog and also my Facebook and Instagram pages as I have some really fabulous quilts to share in the coming weeks and months, some I have to keep secret for what feels like a life time! There are some amazing quilt makers out there.

Time to share some more customer quilts!

Hello friends, readers and others! Today I have a bit to share with you so buckle in and let me get started.

A sample for The Country Yard called Nine Patch Wonder. A pretty soft and feminine quilt.
Kerryn (shop owner) asked for an all over quilting design, this one is called "Far East Leaf".

Next is another sample for The Country Yard. a Rail Fence quilt, complete with prairie points.

Kerryn wanted the best of both worlds for this quilt, all over quilting and a touch of custom quilting.

The middle section is quilted with swirls and feathers, completely hand guided, no patterns, stencils or marking, just fancy free farm quilting folks!

The sashing was ditch stitched on the inner side but not on the side the prairie points are connected, here I echoed the points, then on the outer edge of the border I feathered and swirled to balance in with the inner section. Both of these quilts are available as kits from The Country Yard.
A back view for you.........................

The third quilt is another sample for The Country Yard. This time the Tuesday Mystery Medallion .

For this beauty I custom quilted, plenty of the ditch stitching, cross - hatching, piano keyed border and pebbles.

I LOVE the texture and 'pop' the pebbles create! I used a fine blending thread for these pebbles, because it's all about the texture.

Classic, timeless cross - hatching was spot on for the next 'round' of this reproduction beauty.

The next round was the ultimate playground for the quilter................so feathers came out to play!

this was taken before I echoed the feathers.

                     In the corners where the baskets lay, I filled in the background with textures.

The next round was simple.......................more cross - hatching..................................

Just between you and I, I chewed over what to quilt on the outer border, I wanted something classic, something that framed and 'ended' the quilt, I kept coming back to using the piecing from the delectable mountain pieced border as my guide.

                                    A couple more photo's while the sun is shinning!

I finished my last round last night on my Medallion, now all that is waiting is for it to be quilted, can anyone recommend a quilter? :-)

            To see more Mystery Medallion's pop over to The Country Yards Facebook page.

Thank you for stopping by.............until next time: