Wrapped in Love

Our quilting group at church has finished a season of quilting. Since January 2013, we have made over 60 quilts for infants and hospice patients.
Earlier in the month we dedicated the quilts during a Sunday morning worship service. We placed the quilts on each pew and encouraged people to touch and enjoy them.  This photo was taken prior to the service.

Then we had the fun of delivering them. We made a trip to the neo-natal unit at the hospital where we met with the staff and had a tour of the unit. Each baby has a quilt on their isolette and they get to take it home with them.  A few days after we made our delivery, this photo appeared in our local paper showing one of our quilts in use.

On our last day before we broke for the summer we delivered nine bed sized quilts to one of the hospice units in our area.

Long Arm Quilting

I've played with long arm machines at shows, quilted a row or two on a friend’s machine, but I've never done an entire quilt from start to finish on a long arm. All of my quilts to date have been done on a domestic machine. This past week I rented long arm time at two different shops and finished two quilts for our church’s Hospice project. I did one on a Baby Lock long arm and another on a Gammill. I came home from the first experience knowing that I could learn it, and came home from the second experience planning my next trip. Here’s a sample of my effort. The stitching is not visible on the busy front, but you can get an idea of what I was trying to do by looking at the back. I don’t think I will ever be as controlled with the long arm as I am with my domestic machines, but it was fun, and taking home a finished project after a few hours was thrilling.

The quilt had been washed when I took the photos, and this photo is a close up of one section of the quilt. I didn't have a specific plan for quilting, I just wanted to practice on motifs I currently use.

Guest room renewal

The quilt is finished, and today I made pillowcases to go with it. Thanks to Bloomerie Fabrics for helping me find the raked sand fabric and the dragonfly fabric for the back of the quilt that has been discontinued.  I made the pillowcases from the APQ 1,000,000 pillowcase challenge. I used the roll it up pattern with French seams. It is truly a simple pattern.
 

Good Fortune Quilt

On a whim I purchased a jelly roll of Kate Spain’s Good Fortune fabric on sale at my local quilt shop. I had no plan, but then saw this pattern on Moda Bake Shop and decided to make it up. I had extra yardage from another project, so I had enough fabric.

I’ve been taking Leah Day’s Free Motion Filler class on Craftsy, so I decided to do an allover design of her swirling water pattern.


Although the stitching is not quilt show perfect, it’s good enough. It was a fun design to quilt, and I didn’t get tired of repeating the design.
Here’s what I used
Juki TL98E mid arm machine set in a table
Hobbs wool batting this is the batting I use for all the quilts I keep for myself. Many people think hot and itchy when they think of wool, but it is a beautiful quilt batt with gorgeous loft and drape. It is very comfortable,  washes well and I even dry it in the dryer until damp dry. What’s not to like? the price…
Superior Magnifico 40 wt. polyester thread This is a new thread for Superior and it is fantastic. It comes in a wide range of colors. I purchased a color card so I can get a good match. I used the sky blue thread for this quilt. The needle tension needs to be set between 3.0 and 4.0. 
Organ 90 topstitch needle Every sewing machine has a favorite needle. My Juki will not sew with anything but an Organ needle, and the quilting process works best with a topstitch needle.