This is Nancy, my adopted grandmother. Not to be confused with my mom, Nancy (she was in a recent post.) Over the years Nancy has become a dear family friend. More recently she has become like a grandmother to my sisters and I. A few weeks ago, she even told someone we were her grandkids when she was asked how she knew us. We love to go to her house and just chit chat. She always takes such an interest in our lives. I really love that about her. She often has good advice to offer too. My favorite thing to do with Nancy is quilt. We have what you might call quilt-a-thons every summer. This usually involves me arriving at her house around 7 or 8 am and sewing with her until 4ish or occasionally for a whole 12 hours til 7 pm! Wahoo! We have ourselves a good old time working hard on our quilt projects...well at least I'm supposed to. (It's more like Nancy keeping me on track or bossing me. You should hear us, it's hilarious!) She and I then often break for a nice big lunch at a nearby resturant. She spoils me. I love being spoiled! Then in exactly an hour's time it's back to work! I always accomplish so much when I go to her house, and we have such fun. She likes all the bright colored fabrics and modern patterns I do. Below is one of her latest creations which I quilted for her. I love doing her quilts b/c she's so flexible with allowing me to just do whatever I feel best fits the quilt.
Her one request with this one was to make the blue diamonds stand out. She wanted to emphasize the pinwheel pattern instead of the yellow stars. This was effectively accomplished by lightly quilting in the blue areas and densely quilting in the yellow. While the yellow areas are busy, hence attracting attention, the blue areas are the first thing the eye sees because they really did turn out 3D...slightly poofy.
It was difficult to capture a good shot of the 3D action. It is more apparent in person.
Lovely, sweeping corner feather. I had a ball designing this newby feather. It has traces of the tradtional rounded edge feathers I usually do, but it also combines curly Q's, and fern leaves.
Center side feather. "Splitting" the feather, making it go in 2 directions, was easier than I thought.
Middle center feather.
Action shot! Yeah baby, look at those feathers rockin' and rollin'.
Upclose glimpse of the light quilting inside the blue areas.
Lots & Lots & Lots & Lots & Lots & Lots & Lots & Lots & Lots & Lots of little Pebbles. Even though I only had to do this in 4 narrow areas, those pebbles took forever because they averaged about 3/8" in diameter. But look what they do for the quilt!
Trying for a better shot of the 3D action. The lighting in this one also better shows the actual colors of the quilt.
This a grainey, washed out pic, but I posted it to show how successfully my feathers butted up to one another. Since the feathering in the border areas was not one continuous design, I needed to be sure to "blend" where one feather started and one ended. I avoid gaps. Gaps do not look good. Hope you've enjoyed this post as much as I have Nancy! (She also reads my blogs ( :
This quilt required 3 solid days of quilting to complete it. Whew!!! In order to get the entire quilt in one picture, I had my sisters hold it over the railing of our back deck. It is about 12 feet tall, and the quilt was so long it almost touched the grass below! It was also heavy! The twins managed to hold it for about 1 minute - just long enough for me to snap a photo! Brenda did a perfect job piecing this beauty together. She told me to "go to town" on it. I had a marvelous time quilting in feathers, curly q's, leaves, ribbons, loops, meandering, and many custom designs for some of the individual blocks. There will be more photos coming soon!
