Finishes | Evening in the Garden Quilts

November 13, 2018
by Valerie 2 Comments

Panel Quilts

Here are the official results of my summer/fall immersion in using printed panels to inspire quilts. (I have one more panel, designed to be placemats. That can wait for the new year.)

I truly don’t remember what started me on this journey, but it led to me finding these panels on sale at eQuilter.

The last one, with the cardinals, was the simplest. I just left the panel alone and added borders. On the others, I either added patchwork or cut apart and framed the blocks.

The top three are baby quilts, and the bottom three are throw-sized. I think my favorite is the one with the baby animals. The Moon baby quilt has already sold in my Etsy shop, and the others are available there.

This wasn’t among my goals for this year, but at least the Moon quilt is low volume, so that counts!

Thanks for playing along.

November 4, 2018
by Valerie 1 Comment

The Last Christmas Quilt

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Well, no, not the last ever, just for this fall. Aren’t the colors here beautiful, both quilt and woods? No filter, just the light by the end of my photo shoot.

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Here are the real colors from just a few minutes earlier. I managed to erase my photo of the back, but it’s black with fewer snowflakes than the inner border fabric. And I finally remembered to use black batting! It’s Quilter’s Dream Poly. It was thin and flat like cotton, so it was very easy to use. Now that it’s washed, it’s lighter than cotton, with just a little more loft, and probably warmer. I would use it again.

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The metalic thread is Superior’s Glitter, and it sewed like a charm.

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This is the last of my panels (I have one more for placemats that I’ll probably make next year.) and the one to which I did the least. I left it intact and just added two borders.

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This quilt finished at 49″ x 63″. I originally had the outer border a little wider, but someone cut the backing a little short, so…

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Have a great week!

October 15, 2018
by Valerie 1 Comment

Butterfly Finish

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The quilt is finished and the baby isn’t even a week old!

2018-10-14 13.45.54 (1) I used this tutorial from Missouri Star, but I made the blocks 9″, instead of 12″. Or, more accurately, I made them 9.75 x 9″, instead of 13 x 12″ in the original quilt. I hate rectangle blocks! But these were very easy, and I only needed ten of them. Jenny used 2.5″ strips. I used 2″ strips, and it was perfect for using up some leftovers from another project. My solid blocks used 5″ squares, so they would be perfect for a charm pack.

2018-10-14 13.45.48 (1) I quilted between all the blocks, and then used pink Fantastico to quilt wavy diagonal lines, some of them with butterflies.

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And this one counts toward my low-volume goal!

October 11, 2018
by Valerie 2 Comments

Blue Christmas Finish

Here is the latest of my quilts from the pile of panels I purchased this summer. I was aware that I had almost no blue Christmas scraps to use with it, so I purchased some tree yardage for the side borders, and a charm pack of blue and silver batiks, which became the stars. It finished about 50″ by 65″.

Unlike a pieced quilt, this had a large center with no seams to hide any “foundation” quilting to keep things square. Instead, I machine basted a roughly 12″ grid of Dissolve Extra thread on top.

The stars are quilted with gray Bottom Line, the buildings and sleigh with black BL, and the sky and border with navy and white Fantastico.

I really like the way the quilting in the sky looks. I made sort of flame shapes from the center out. Close to the center, the thread hardly shows, but the white parts begin to show up in the dark edges of the sky.

I backed this with a blue batik with silver metallic snowflakes.

And, yes, it’s been tested for snuggliness.

Good luck on your finishes!

September 28, 2018
by Valerie 6 Comments

Friday Finish: A Country Christmas

2018-09-26 12.40.48 (1) And here’s another of my “quilts from panels” series. This fabric really struck me as fresh and wintery. The panel and border are “Holiday Wishes” by Henry Glass. The red and green are also Henry Glass fabrics, but from other collections. And the gray is Kona. It was 50″ x 65″ before washing.

2018-09-26 12.43.08 (1) And I love, love the unrelated glittery tree print (Robert Kaufman) that I found for the back.

All of the quilting is with white Bottom Line, except for the red and green on the border, which is Magnifico and Fantastico.

2018-09-23 14.30.38 Each block has a large snowflake quilted on it, surrounded by strippling. This was almost totally ineffective. Next time I would use a very heavy thread/yarn to do a snowflake outline in couching or bobbin work.

2018-09-26 12.41.27 (1) The gray border turned out much better.

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I think it turned out to be very fun and festive.

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Look for this soon in my Etsy shop.

September 15, 2018
by Valerie 4 Comments

Friday Finish: So Many Stars

2018-09-13 15.58.14 “Summer Stars on Fawn Lake”, the mystery quilt designed by Charlotte Hawkes, is finally finished! We started cutting for this last November, began piecing it in the new year, and finished up assembling the top in May.

2018-09-13 15.58.26 I made the smaller version (3″ stars!) that finished at 79 x 88″ with the borders. This is the first one of these where I used a dark background. I had a lot of dark batik scraps from a space quilt I made a long time ago. I bought a little more to make enough, and the “feathery” batik for the borders and backing. The rest was scraps, especially bright, multi-color and juvenile scraps.

2018-09-13 15.58.37 This is quilted with black Bottom Line on the bottom, and black and purple Bottom Line and purple Art Studio Colors on the top. The effect is pretty subtle, but it can be seen up close. I needed a thread that would blend well with the dark batik, but not be too dark on the bright fabrics. So purple was my neutral.