And then it was November!

The temperatures have dropped into the low 50s, the winter rains and winds have returned to the coast, and it's getting dark before dinnertime. It must be nearing winter!


The end of October had a couple projects for me. The Moonlight Quilters' Guild asked me to quilt two items. First was the President's Quilt, a gift that is given each year to the person who holds the presidency. This year it was Marilynn, who is all about bright colors and contrast! I created a custom design to fill the area with a motif that resembles sun rays and icicles, which was quilted in varigated threads to match the "hot" and "cold" areas.



Next was the guild's Christmas quilt, which was a group effort by all the members of the guild. I found a poinsettia motif as part of a more complicated design, and modified it to be more of a free-form pattern. It was a lot of fun!


Now on the racks is an Amish style sampler quilt for Michele, which is going to have feathered cables around the borders, and echo quilting throughout most of the middle of the quilt.


Karen
Ye Merrie Quilter

The Quiet Month of October

I don't know if it's the uncertainty of the economy or if it was the beginning of the school year, or if it was a series of quilt shows that kept people busy with other things than visiting this local long armer, but I really only worked on one quilt this month, something for myself. This quilt is one that I got blocks in a friendship block exchange throughout 2007 from some online friends. I put them together to make a King size top, and have named it Mountains of Friends.


I heavily quilted the green border with "pine needles" and covered the rest of it with an all-over birch leaf motif.


Hopefully business will pick up in November. If you have something to work on, please drop me a note and I'll see if I can help you!

Karen, Ye Merrie Quilter

Donna's Elements Quilt finished!

Here is Donna's Elements quilt. I enjoyed quilting arches from corner to corner, filling in erratic lighting strikes, and windy swirls in the rainy border.

I also have the opportunity to quilt something for myself, Addie's 9-Patch, named for my great-aunt who was a quilter. She passed away in 1962, several years before I was born, but I hope she would appreciate this tribute to her memory.

Enjoy!

Karen

Ye Merrie Quilter

End of August 2008

Here are a few photos of the things I was finishing up this month. I'm not doing a LOT of work lately, but I feel like I'm always busy! Why is that?

Donna gave me this quilt to do, and I had to think about it for a while to decide what I was going to do. Finally it became clear that I needed to do something feathery. So I decided that random feathers would be just the thing!

I did a nice feather all around the green border using a varigated green thread that perfectly blended with the fabric...so well, in fact, it was hard to get a photo to turn out!

The interior was done in a black (and sadly, this photo is pretty blurry), with dark blue on the back to blend in with the slate blue batik on the back.

She was very happy with the work and is hoping that her Mom likes it!

She handed me a new quilt to work on, but it needs to be done this week for the quilt show next month--the Elements Round Robin that the quilt guild did. I worked on Sharon's before, as I mentioned, and this is her quilt top! It's beautiful! Very different from Sharon's, and will be a challenge to find quilting patterns to reflect the various elements, and to get it done this week!

Enjoy!
Karen,

Ye Merrie Quilter

August Activities

August has been a quiet month. This has been a time of vacations, travel, visiting, and drinking home made lemonade and fanning yourself in the heat.

I did, however, work on this stunning One Block Wonder made by Donna. I called it "Frogs in a Blender"...though that's not entirely a palatable idea, is it? Simply "Frogs" will do, I suppose. Donna is always inspired by new designs, new patterns, and new techniques. She found this one at the local quilt shop, and of course, she immediately had to try it. She selected a beautiful fabric with bright colors and high contrast, which worked remarkably well in changing the colors from light to dark across the top of the quilt. She added borders to make it large enough for her bed.

The frogs inspired me to "draw" lily pads all over the top. Well, where else would frogs live? I hope you can see it in this photo--I was having trouble photographing the stitches on this very busy print.

I tried, for the first time, the new Green batting made from recycled plastic bottles. It not only is called "green" because it's recycled, but it actually IS green...a pale mint green. While it worked fairly well for quilting and I didn't seem to have any problems with the quilting part, I found it to be rather fussy and easily stretched while loading it up on the rollers. If I were unfolding it on the floor with a few helping hands, or using it for small projects, I would use it again. Probably not for something this large, however. I still prefer needlepunched cotton--it's a little more rugged and, because it's a natural fiber, will breathe well on a bed.

I love some of the details she added on the edges, such as this fan of repeats along the edge. There were also hexagons floating around the edges, much like lily pads in a lake. I visited a local lake to look at some lily pads to get a better idea how they would look, and included a few random flowers in the stitching, too.

The next on the docket is another giant one-block wonder with peacocks on it. This is screaming for some feathers, but I will have to plan the feather pattern for it to make sure it lines up and looks balanced. It's a lot more work, but it's totally worth it in the end!

I have heard from another friend that she has another top ready to be delivered soon! Details to come!

Enjoy!

Karen

Ye Merrie Quilter

Late July Quilts

Sharon's Elements quilt: Water, Earth, Wind and Fire. This was a detailed custom job--each of the six borders had a different design to compliment the different elements in the quilt. This was part of a round robin in the quilt guild last year, and was my favorite of all the completed quilts.


I love the "Fire" element with the sun rising over the pyramid. Yeah, when I think of pyramids, I think of very hot deserts!



The Birds in the Air



The Mountains


The Kites

The Water droplets and waves



Marilynn's Butterflies Quilt was made for a friend to celebrate a life milestone. (Pictured with the quilt is Marilynn, herself!) Originally I was going to create a butterfly motif to cover the entire quilt, but the quilt told me that it wasn't interested in that...it wanted a zig-zag pattern, like the Flight of the Butterflies.



The brown border does have a continuous butterfly pattern that I created.


Keep on Quilting!
Karen
Ye Merrie Quilter

July 2008 update

Here are some new quilts that I finished since the last post--some were actually from June, but one was finished just tonight!

This is actually the most recent--Marilynn's Windmills. She said to be creative, so I gained my inspiration of the pattern from the border fabric. This one is covered with six and seven petaled flowers, dancing merrily across the top.
This is the back of the quilt--just as pretty as the top!

Sharon made this miniature Underground Railroad Commemorative sampler that she used for a class sample. This was fun to do each block just a little bit differently, including a boat rocking on waves and wind blowing the sails.

Michele's Mountains - an online swap culminated in this gorgeous scrappy mountain quilt. Because the quilt had so many sharp points and long lines, it seemed only logical to quilt it with flowing leaves.

Enjoy!

Karen, Ye Merrie Quilter

June updates

This is the Saffron 4-Patch that I finished in April. I submitted it to a fabric store for their in-house quilt show, where it hung for the month of May. It didn't win anything, but I wasn't really in it for the prizes--I just wanted to participate. It measures approximately 100" square.
I created this circular motif based on a linear quilting motif for longarms. There was a lot of cutting and pasting and photocopying to get it symmetrical and looking right.

This outside border was a very intensive and required a lot of bobbin thread changes, but it was SO worth it!

I also worked on a quilt for the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project, which is a non-profit organization that does a second harvest on fields, collecting odd shaped and "ugly" but edible fruits and vegetables for homeless shelters and food banks in Whatcom County. It's an awesome organization, and I'm happy to have donated my services to them.

Here's a detail of the blocks--I did the same quilting on this one as I did on Marilynn's Stack and Slash 9 Patch (below), a sort of free-form hearts motif. It's very fast and fun, but isn't a predictable pantograph pattern and can be modified to fill a space.

Marilynn's Bright Stack & Slash 9-patch and detail of the free-form hearts motif.

And lastly, for this post, at least, a detail of the Civil War Commemorative Quilt, made by me in the "Underground Railroad Sampler", the class I taught for Eleanor Burns' book in 2004. I quilted each block differently--this one turned out the nicest, I think!

Enjoy!

Karen, the Merrie Quilter

May 2008 photo samples

Greetings, Quilt Lovers, Admirers, and Enthusiasts!



In order to give you a chance to see what kinds of work I can do, I thought I'd post a few pictures of my work. You can click on the picture to view a more detailed photo, and feel free to ask questions using the comment section at the end of the post.





My sister posing with her grandson's quilt--this was done using a free-form swirl with sharp directional changes.

Tara's stack-and-whack quilt was filled with very small stipples and a swirl on the sawblades of the blocks.
Sharon's Dad's quilt with a big, loose stipple. 100% flannel top and back with Warm Company cotton batting.
Marilynn's quilt with a unique paisley pattern filled with bubbles and the background used a free-form swirl with sharp directional changes.
Sharon's Topsy Turvy Stars quilted with a Pointless Swirl pattern. I used Signature thread, 100% cotton, in a variegated rainbow called "Rio de Janiero."

Large, loose stipple.

Another of Marilynn's quilts using various free-form motifs to fill the different areas.

This one was just screaming for loopy-loops! Another very fast, all-over motif.

This was a really fun project--the spikes of the New York Beauty seemed to need an echo quilted pattern and the quarter circles were filled in with arches.

Thanks!

Karen


Ye Merrie Quilter