Redwork Romance

One other just-finished quilt that I'll enter in the Waco Quilt Show is my redwork one.  I've named it Redwork Romance.  I have worked on the redwork embroideries for, literally, years.  I would guess about six or seven!  For long stretches of time, I would do nothing on this project, and then I'd take the embroidery to work on when I was out of town.  When my Bee began last fall, I started taking this embroidery to do, since I really disliked having to pack up and haul my sewing machine anywhere.  After I had finally done all 12 of the embroideries, then I assembled them into a quilt.  This was the first and only kit I've ever purchased.  The Alex Anderson pattern and fabrics turned into a wonderful quilt! 

As usual, I got my machine-quilting wizard friend, Judy Steward, to quilt it for me.  She did her typical outstanding job!  I especially love the way she quilted closely within the embroidered squares, which highlighted the bouquets of flowers and made them look almost like trupunto.   She also did a beautiful quilting job in the borders.

And now, some pictures.  As usual, clicking on the photos will enlarge them.

One of the flowers.  You can see the close stippling
quilting that Judy did, and hopefully, you can see how
the flower looks very like I had used trupunto.

Judy echo quilted around each bouquet and then, as mentioned above,
stippled closely in the background.

This close-up shows several of the flower bouquets and
then the adjacent four patch blocks, each of which
used a different Alex Anderson fabric.





One of the most charming aspects of this design is the scalloped edge on
the borders!



Here's the quilt in its entirety.



Cotton Candy Quilt Finished!

My Guild's semi-annual Quilt Show is April 8 and 9.  We're to deliver our quilts on April 6.  So I am working right down to the wire.  Of the four quilts I am entering, two have been hanging in our house for over a year.  But two are brand new.  Cotton Candy is what I am calling this pink quilt, which will be sent later in April to a baby girl named Bridget who lives in Virginia.  I usually have my good friend and super-expert quilter, Judy Steward, quilt my quilts for me for compensation.  Cotton Candy, however, was not pieced in time for Judy to quilt it.  So with much fear and trepidation, I did the machine quilting in the quilt's center, and then did some hand-quilting in the wide borders, using Perle cotton and the so-called "big stitch" or "utility stitch."   I did this quilting randomly, going around most of the motifs in the border fabric.  I've done the stitch before, in a baby quilt for one of our grandsons, and learned that it is much faster and easier to do than the traditional quilting stitch.  Too, it is easier on arthritic hands!

Here are some pictures of Cotton Candy:

Here's Cotton Candy, pinned to my design wall.  All that's lacking
is for me to steam it, to encourage it to hang straight and flat, and attaching
the hanging sleeve and a label.

A close-up showing both the machine stitching in the quilt center
and the big stitch hand-quilting with Perle cotton thread #8.  When you click to
enlarge, you'll see a "B" that I have embroidered in the bottom
border; this is for Bridget, the baby girl who will be
receiving this quilt soon.



Here you can see that in the pale pink setting triangles in this quilt
which has its block set "on point," I used a machine
serpentine stitch around the edges of the setting triangles.

Here you can see in a closer view the straight-line machine
stitching that I did, with two lines of stitching in each small block, zig-zagging across the width
of the quilt.