Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Ladies of the Sea #15 & #16

I have finished the last of the center ship blocks on Ladies of the Sea.  The last two blocks were the Chinese Pirate Junk, 1807 and the French ship the Le Coureur, 1778. 
Sue Garman's patterns and instructions for this quilt have been so enjoyable and well written.  The blocks have come together beautifully and the instructions have always included the history of the ship and "smooth sailing" tips to make the blocks a little easier if needed.  The floral wreaths surrounding each ship always have a tie to the country of origin of each ships.  The pattern was originally designed as a block of the month and each pattern ended with a  bit of sailing trivia for the month.
I have posted about it before, but as much as I enjoy needle turn hand applique I decided to do this quilt with machine applique.   The background is a Kona cotton and all of the appliques came out of my batik scraps.  I used King Tut variegated threads for the blanket stitch applique which blended in well with the batik fabrics. 

 I like to keep things neat and would always bring my threads to the back of the block and then pull them thru a few stitches on the back. I have about 15 hours in each block.

The flowers in each ship's wreath are echoed in the borders. They are full of applique, the first border is all prepped and I have begun working on it.   

 I like to visit Judi Madsen's blog Green Fairy Quilts.  She is a sensational long arm machine quilter and last month she was quilting a completed Ladies of the Sea, it is just gorgeous!  Very inspirational and motivational to keep me working on mine. (sensational, motivational, inspirational ---I guess you could say I like her work)   I love the pebbling she did in the borders because it reminds me of bubbles and seems water like. So I am starting to think about how I am going to quilt my quilt as I am getting closer and closer to completion. 
 Happy Stitching All,
Cheri 
                                                                                                

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Scrappy Stars and Jester's Hats

I can not believe we are already to the August free motion quilt challenge from SewCalGirl already.  The August instructor is Wendy Sheppard.  She gave instructions for a quilting motif she named Jester's Hats.  This motif could be used for a background fill, border, or even all over quilt design.  It gives nice texture as an all over pattern.    I wanted to give it a try as a border pattern and as a smaller background fill so I divided my little sample into a center square and a border.
  I had a hard time thinking "Pointy" (I really wanted to round those points) and ended up putting the pictures of jester hats right by my sewing machine so I could keep looking at it.  Wendy has a wonderful blog called Ivory Spring with lots of tutorials and great information and posts.


I made a few scrappy stars blocks and put them into a little table topper quilt that measures about 23 inches. 

 Happy stitching all!
Cheri