Practice, practice, practice.... that's my advice! I love all the blogs that are out there now, sharing ideas and tutorials. Two of my great go-to web sites are Green Fairy Quilts and Sharon Schamber.
Sharon has many free videos on Youtube, but also a web site where you can subscribe and watch videos of her quilting to your heart's delight.
I am nowhere near as good as these two, they are really over the top, but they definitely have inspired me to try some new things. Here are some close ups of my latest attempt:
This quilt is from a friend in Idaho. The quilt is so huge I don't have a good picture of the whole thing, but it has sort of a medallion in the middle and appliques of the different cattle brands all their families have used. There are some big open spaces and the borders are about 14" wide.
The main quilt fabric is actually a polyester sateen sheet. I know. This is not something I would have ever considered, but it really quilted up beautifully. I thought it ended up looking almost like tooled leather. I used Glide thread in a peach color, and Hobbs 80-20 batting.
All the credit for my design ideas goes to Judi Madsen at Green Fairy Quilts - most people are surprised to learn that using a ruler to do straight lines is much harder than all the free hand swirls and feathers. Judi's posts gave me the confidence to mark this quilt and add the lines, which I think came out beautifully!
Here's a picture of one corner, which gives you a little idea of the overall look of the quilt.
Here's what else I have been up to - one of my favorite things at the end of the summer is the beautiful abundance of produce. I try to put a little summer in the jars.
Here's one of my favorite songs by Greg Brown, take a minute to listen.
Hope you are enjoying this beautiful end of summer day.
Happy Quilting!
Pam
