The Quilter on Osage Hill

Lately I have been busy mainly with quilting quilts. In the last 5 weeks or so I have quilted 6 quilts. I had a collection of tops and knew it was time to start quilting and finishing them up. Here are pictures of these quilts:

Whistler’s Wife Quilt

Remember this was the first of my old kits I started on and here is the first one completely done (Yea!!!)

Japanese Fabrics Quilt

This quilt was made for my Sister, Jeni. Jeni lived in Japan for a while and brought home with her loads of wonderful Japanese fabrics. This is one of the first “design as you go” quilts I have done. I found a great tutorial by Elizabeth Hartman for Loopy Flowers Quilting Tutorial that I loved and bookmarked as something to try on a future quilt. This was the perfect quilt for the design and I had a lot of fun doing the quilting on it although it was a little time consuming. Here is a link to the tutorial: http://www.ohfransson.com/oh_fransson/2010/06/machine-quilting-loopy-flowers.html. And, here is a close up picture of the quilting.

In the end, I also added in small flowers among the larger ones and I thought that looked good.

 Mom’s Mystery Quilt

I also had my first paid quilting job for my Mom. She took a Mystery Quilt class and did an AMAZING job on it. When she started taking the class she was a beginner quilter and the class was VERY advanced. The quilt included about every quilting technique there is in it’s many different blocks. I quilted in a rainbow variegated thread which looked great on this colorful quilt top. My Mom did a great job on this quilt and I was so proud of her! This quilt, designed and created by My Mom’s teacher, Mary Bauer who won first place in the  the Quilter ‘s Choice category at the AQS Grand Rapids, MI Quilt show this year. Here is a picture of my Mom’s version of this quilt:

Round Robin Quilt

Our quilting group has done 2 Round Robin quilts. This is my second one, so fun:

Angry Quilt

This was my first finished quilt in all solids. My friend, Stephanie, and I both made this quilt from City Quilts by Cherri House. The reason we called it the Angry quilt is because when we first saw it on the design wall it looked so stark with the solids and black and with all the straight lines; almost reminiscent  of prison bars. This quilt turned out to be perfect for my stepson Philip who just moved into his first apartment. He loves the quilt; like it was designed for him as he has always loved the color black. Sadly, I forgot to get a picture before giving it to Philip, but do have a picture of part of it up on my design wall. I used mono poly thread for quilting as I didn’t want the thread to show up too much. The thread worked well; thanks to Joni for the suggestion.

Japanese Fabrics Quilt for Emmett

This is a quilt I made for my nephew with fabrics from Japan that my sister picked out for his quilt. I made it a two sided quilt and designed both sides myself. I used the mono poly thread on this one too and did a loop meander.

In between quilting I have been working on my second kit, A Civil War Legacy by Kaye England. I have completed my top and also pieced a back. I was so pleased to find coordinating fabrics for the outer border, backing and binding in my stash!!! I really like the way the striped outer border fabric finishes this busy, scrappy quilt. You will be surprised that my next kit of unfinished projects is not one with Civil War Reproduction fabrics. Here is part of the finished Civil War Legacy top:

My exciting news is that I will be leaving next week to attend Gwen Marston’s Beaver Island Quilt Retreat. This will be my second year at Gwen’s retreat. I am so excited to see everyone again and be inspired by Gwen and all the participants. There is always such a huge range of projects that are worked on and tons of inspiration. I am planning on working in solids this year. Here is my fabric collection for the trip and a book of Gwen’s I just ordered recently.

Sew long from the Quilter on Osage Hill!