Christmas Embroidery and Quilts

Last fall I purchased a combination sewing/embroidery machine (Brother NQ3500D) and I've been discovering ways to use some designs in my quilts. I've shared a Christmas quilt with you a while back that used some beautiful red work designs from Bird Brain Designs. 
 I love the way this quilt combines some of the elements that I really love. The scrappy little squares that form the criss cross of the Irish chain part of the design.
 And the swirling quilting that Marie of Blueberry Hill Quilts did on her long arm quilting machine.
 This quilt fits so well into our country acreage lifestyle and one of our barn cats wanted to check it out!
 Quilts are not just for beds. I will drape them over chairs, stair railings, stack them folded on chairs and just casually throw them over the back of the sofa.
I may make this again in a different colorway - do you think I should do black? or blue? or browns?

--Ann

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pink Chevron Quilt Tutorial

Image
This is a little quilt I made for my newest grandbaby and I promised a tutorial for all of you. Materials required: 50 pink charm squares (5") 50 white or cream charm squares (5") Batting Backing Binding - approximately 170" length (Here's a great place to get your charms - SewFunQuilts on Etsy - $6.85 US for a pack of 30 squares) I used a fat eighth pack of 12 different pink fabrics and a piece of pink from my stash. It was enough for the 50 charm squares and the binding. A fat eighth is 9"x22" and you can get four 5" squares and one 2.25" binding strip from each with a 2" - 2.25" strip left over. Match each pink charm square with a white charm square. Draw a diagonal line through the center and sew a quarter inch seam on either side of your drawn line. Cut apart on your drawn line and press towards the pink fabric. Take all your pink/white squares and lay them out in a chevron pattern. There will be no need to trim to si
Read more

Blue Jean Quilt

Image
Pinterest is a great place for inspiration and I saw this quilt and quickly pinned it, knowing I would be back to make it. The pattern is found in Fons and Porter's Easy Quilts, Spring 2014 edition. Last week, I checked the magazines when I bought my groceries and bought the magazine. I think I could have figured it out on my own, but it's always nice to have a new magazine or two to browse through! I traced the circle template onto some template plastic that I've had for a very long time and dug my stack of old jeans out of the back of the closet. I found a video to play in the background while I traced and cut and in a few hours, I had 168 circles cut from my stack of blue jeans.  The thing that caught my eye about this particular jean quilt was the bright colored fabrics that were peeking out from between the blue jean circles. I have a lot of fat quarters and fabric scraps, but I also had 4 packs of charm squares from Moda's Basic Grey collectio
Read more

Family Tree Quilt

Image
Recently I completed a family tree quilt. This was a challenge for me, not just to put it together, but to use the ideas and feedback from my customer and adapt the design to the size of the embroidery.  The details were fused on with Steam a Seam and then button hole stitched. The customer found some butterfly fabric she really loved and it is used as the border. Family Tree Quilt It is quilted with an all-over butterfly pattern that reflects the butterflies in the border. --Ann
Read more