Whole Cloth Quilt

Well it's not exactly "tomorrow" but soon after anyway!

I am very excited to at last add my whole cloth quilt to my blog.  It is from a class I did with Issie Steenberg about a year ago and I've worked on it intermittently as my fmq teaching has allowed.  The 16 inch squares are divided diagonally and each one has a different pattern quilted within the diagonal lines.  It was a mammoth task trying to think of different fmq patterns to quilt in each quarter.  I think there is one repeat which I had obviously forgotten about having stitched it a few months previously.

Whole cloth King Size Quilt

 

The quilted squares were trimmed to 16 inches and joined together using the quilt-as-you-go method.
Here are a few more close-ups of some of the quilting.

I quilted loose feathers around the entire border and then joined it also with quilt-as-you-go after the 36 squares had been joined together.  There was a lot of hand stitching in the joining but the finish is far nicer than machine stitching.

I was delighted to see this quilt displayed at the Clarens Quilt Festival.  It drew quite a bit of attention and inspired many people to take my Free Motion Quilting class.  It is not a very good photo as there was a lot of light in the room.

Whole cloth quilt in Clarens

Thank you for visiting my blog once again.  I hope this has inspired you to start one of these whole cloth quilts.  It is so very rewarding once the quilt is finished!!

Happy quilting,

 

National Quilt Festival

So many months have passed since my last blog post; where does the time go!  There are surely not enough hours in the day to get everything done.  My free motion quilting classes have really kept me busy the past few months with a full program coming up in September and October which will now be involving me in a few road trips in South Africa.  But I am not complaining as I absolutely love teaching and sharing what I know and what I have done with so many people.

Back to what this blog is about - our National Quilt Festival held in July at Kearsney College near the beautiful Valley of a Thousand Hills in Natal.  I decided to enter my "Swoon" Quilt, a pattern from Camille Roskelley which I had been making for a few months and where I had free motion quilted in the negative spaces.  The fabrics I used were from Kaffe Fassett's collection and I used Aurifil thread to do the quilting. I was very happy with the result and really did not expect to win a 3rd place ribbon for my effort.  Here is a pic of the quilt hanging in the exhibition.

Swoon

 

And of course yours truly!













A few close-ups of the quilting.

My sister Barbara and I attended three classes at the festival.  Oh my word, I now have to find time to complete what we started in these classes but they will get done and I'll put them on my blog!

Here are a few photos in the beautiful grounds of Kearsney College in Botha's Hill, Kwa-Zulu Natal .
 

Lunch tables

Many vendors selling tasty treats

Barbara enjoying her Crunchie!

Thank you for visiting today.  Please come back tomorrow and see pics of my wholecloth quilt which I have now at last finished!

Happy quilting,