Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Starry Woods

Starry Woods
I had this great woodsy fabric and I wanted to make something out of it, and the stars appealed to me.  I made blocks and sashing and lots of borders.  Viola!  A quilt!  This quilt lives at Michelle's house.


back of Starry Woods quilt
 The backing is pieced and it was quilted in sections.  I had experimented with free-motion quilting ideas, so the quilting patterns on this quilt are quite varied.

detail of a star

detail of another star


detail of Starry Woods label
I used a commercial label from a label panel.  Then hand-stitched the title and date.

Saturday, July 1, 2006

Dancing Keys

Dancing Keys quilt
This was Scott's "College Quilt" except it didn't get finished until after he graduated from College.  It's log cabin blocks in a Streak o Lightening set.  I felt that the blocks and the colors produced a more masculine looking quilt.  This set reminded me of xylophone or piano keys; perfect for my musician son.  I pieced the blocks using an antique Singer handcrank sewing machine.  Then I pulled out my regular machine to do assemble the blocks.  The backing is done with fabric that has musical instruments and notes all over it.  This was quilted using straight lines because I couldn't drop the feed dogs on the sewing machine I had.  As a result there is very little quilting and its all in straight lines.
Detail of Dancing Keys label
The words on the label are hand embroidered, as on many of my early quilts.