Group Sampler

One of the young women in our quilting group was not able to continue working on her sampler quilt with the rest of us. Three of us chose the blocks we wanted to make and I quilted it for her. We deviated slightly from the Craftsy BOM 2012 choosing only the blocks we liked the most and adding some of our own designs.

I love how Connie designed the left over fat quarters to make a pieced back.

Even though I have been busy with Christmas events, I decided to have some fun with free motion quilting. I took Leah Day’s free motion quilting a sampler and made my class sample by Leah’s instructions.

As in our block selection, I chose to do some of the quilting I liked the best.

I hadn’t done a proper feather in a while, so the hexie block got a feather on the left and a shadow repeat of the block shape on the right.

Connie liked the paper piece goose block, and made it with a red background. It was the perfect place for the in and out spiral that enchants me. I’m getting better at backtracking over the initial quilting line

Tracy was crazy about the Dresden blocks, but this one came out a bit shy of the 12 1/2 inch size. I love the way she compensated. This was the first block I did with pebble quilting, but more about that later

The Balkan puzzle block got some straight line echo quilting.
When it came to the border I was planning to do the river path design as suggested by Leah Day. The first line I quilted looked so skimpy as the border was wider than the pattern called for. So I added some straight line echo quilting. That still didn't look like enough, so I put pebble quilting opposite the straight line quilting.

Were I doing it again, I’d add more pebbles. And come to think of it, I will be doing it again. I still have mine with the white background to complete.
Had I taken photos before I washed the quilt, the quilting designs would have shown up better, but I had a terrible accident with the quilt top and got grease all over it when it got caught in my car door. I didn't want to treat it with any product and inhale fumes while I quilted it and washing an unquilted top was out of the question. So I just pin basted and quilted it with the stains on it, and it all came out in the wash thanks to Stanley Degreaser. That product has saved me more than once. Stanley home sales is long out of business, but another company bought the name and formula and I am still confident that it could get out the stains resulting from washing and drying a box of crayons with a load of clothes. (my original Stanley miracle)