sharing & meanderings

Those BIG quilts that I mentioned last week
I got returned to a friend/customer
so I wanted to share her finishes...
Joell always a great job in her piecing - no lumps, creases, points cut off - nothing!
It's always a pleasure when I get to meander across her flimsies.
The first was a king-sized beauty:

 I love all of the patterns made by her color choices in the one above.
The border had a circle-y, swirly motif with birds and flowers  tossed in,
so I did my meandering with a circle-within-circle quilting design that echoed the feeling of the border motif.  I guess I didn't take a close-up of the quilting I did, so hopefully you can see it in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture.

Then, there was this one:

 It wasn't quite king-sized, done in thirties fabrics.  She had some old Dresden blocks that were already hand-pieced, but I don't think she did those herself.  I think this is the one that she put borders on and I got to quilt, and then she will bind and it's going to her Mom's house to live.
I did take a close-up pic of this one - I used King Tut-40 weight in #971 white linen for the meandering...

I quilted around the outside of the Dresden plates & cross-hatched the centers.  Then in the open blocks, I replicated with free-motion the Dresden plate- same design, then did a bigger cross hatch across the piecing of the blocks.  In the outside border I did a "ladder" type stitching pattern.  I really love this one - but since it's going to Joell's Mom's, I guess I won't pester her about it staying here :).

I've had a few questions about my quilting, so here are a few answers:

• Everything I quilt is free-motion.  That means it's all my hands, guiding the stitching line, so it's not computer-generated-perfect, but that's why I like it, I guess.  And, to me, that is what I enjoy about free motion quilting by machine - I can let my creativity loose when I press the start button and the needle starts stitching!
• The machine is a HandiQuilter Fusion, 24" bed with the Studio frame and table so it's always set up king-sized.
• I share the machine with a friend.  Her name also starts with the letter D, hence the name of our machine is "Big DD".  The "big" is because we had another HQ machine but we up-graded, and this is a bigger model.  The sharing of a machine thing:  The friend, "D" and I get along wonderfully; Big DD lives at my house, and "D" and I always let each other know if we're going to be using/needing the machine, so it's available to each of us as needed.
• I almost always use the King Tut threads - 40 weight, and I love the variegated colors, so if the customer says it's o.k., then that's what I use.  King Tut has so many color choices, so that's what I stock.
• If I supply the batting, I use Heirloom by Hobbs - 100 % cotton, unbleached.  I like how it stitches, and I love how it shrinks just a little when it's washed up.

OK- I should get off of here - I'm going to the NQA show that's in Columbus this weekend, and I have stuff I should be doing first!  (p.s. click on the NQA link underlined above, and there's a list of the winning quilts already!!!)

Hope your week is going well -
and Happy Stitching!