Free Motion Quilting (and the Peacock Party)

Thank you for all your feed back on my last post about how long it takes to hand quilt a quilt.  It's always interesting to hear other people's thoughts. I have replied to everyone that I could.  If you didn't get an email from me, it's because you're a no reply blogger.  Here's a link to Bonnie Hunter's guide to fixing this issue.  I highly recommend reading it and changing your settings, because then we can communicate!

Anyway, I did promise to show you the two quilts I'd had free motion quilted (FMQ) by a long armer.

First up is my Home and Away quilt.

This quilt was designed by Wendy Williams from Material Obsession in Sydney.  I made it in a block of the month program back in 2014.

I loved stitching all the wool felt applique by hand, but once it was finished I just couldn't figure out how I would hand quilt it myself.  So I asked Sue Burnett from Busy Bee in Wellington to do stippling around all the felt applique, and do some basic designs in the pieced blocks. I didn't want the quilting going over the wool felt.

I love how it looks, and was very pleased that I chose to get it quilted by a professional.


The second quilt that I had free motion quilted by a long armer was my recently finished Portraits quilt.  I was under a bit of time pressure with this one. Anna Maria Horner had asked me to make it to promote her tour to New Zealand, and I knew it would take me months to hand quilt it.

Sorry that I haven't got a better photo yet.  I'm working on it.

So, I asked Donna Ward from Hamilton if she would machine quilt it for me.   Donna did a fantastic job on it and I'm really pleased with the finished quilt. She quilted different designs to suit different blocks in the quilt.

I love all the swirls that Donna quilted.  The finished quilt is beautiful and I really am going to take some better photos as soon as possible. 

So, there is a place for machine quilting, but my primary quilting method is hand quilting, and that's what I enjoy doing the most.


How it's time for the Peacock Party.  What have you been working on this week?  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Home and Away quilt

It's September so it's time for the Bloggers' Quilt Festival with Amy Ellis of Amy's Creative Side.   My first entry is my Home  and Away quilt.  Wendy Williams from Sydney, Australia designed this pattern and I made it as part of a Block of the Month programme from Material Obsession in Sydney.  It's wool felt applique so I sewed all those felt shapes on by hand, and then joined the sections up.

I had this quilt quilted on a long arm machine because I couldn't imagine hand quilting around all those shapes.  I love how Sue B from Busy Bee Quilt Shop managed to avoid all the felt pieces when she was quilting it for me.

Here it is on the spare bed.  That wall quilt above the bed is designed by Wendy Williams too! I love her bright colourful designs.

You can read more about Home and Away on this post.  If you want to buy the pattern you can get it from Material Obsession here.   A word of warning though, this quilt took me almost two years to make.  There's a huge amount of cutting and stitching, but all the good things in life take time.

My second entry in the Bloggers' Quilt Festival is my Zebra and you can read about it here.

Amy Ellis from Amy's Creative Side has been hosting the Bloggers' Quilt Festival for many years.  I've been entering since 2014 because I love joining with other quilters to show what we can make with fabric and thread.

This year is different - you don't need to visit all the categories, and you don't need to vote for winners.  The prizes will distributed randomly across everyone who enters.

I encourage you to pop over to Amy's blog and see all the quilts on display.  Once you visit a quilt there is a check mark that appears on the photo, to help you keep track of where you’ve been. The linky software Amy uses keeps track of your IP address, so if you switch devices you won’t have the same check marks.

Home and Away is finished

My "Home and Away" quilt is finished!!!  And after two years work it it totally deserves all those exclamation marks.

I love this quilt - it's bright and whimsical - just what I like, and it's full of beautiful Kaffe Fassett fabrics too.

I loved making this quilt. I enjoyed choosing and cutting the beautiful wool felt, and appliqueing it onto the background with my bright Perle 8 threads.

I even enjoyed making all those Half Square Triangles, although I wish I'd had a Bloc Loc ruler to help me.

This pattern was designed by the very talented Wendy Williams of Flying Fish Kits, Australia (click here for her website). Wendy works at Material Obsession in Sydney, with Kathy Doughty.  Material Obsession offered this quilt as a Block of the Month back in 2013.  I enrolled in the program after seeing the original quilt when Wendy came to NZ to teach at Handmade. The program ran for 10 months and I loved opening my parcel each month.

Updated Aug 2016:  This pattern can now be purchased directly from Wendy William's website here .  Wendy also has a number of similar patterns on her website and in her book.

Wendy Williams, the designer, called her quilt "Your Place or Mine?", but I've chosen to call my version "Home and Away".  Some of you will know there's an Australian TV series called Home and Away, so it seemed an appropriate name, given that the quilt has Australian origins..  I've never watched Home and Away myself, so it's not because I'm a fan.  I chose the name because the quilt shows cities, farms and beaches, so it really does show both home and away.

It's ended up a big quilt at 88" x 88". Here it is on our queen sized spare bed.

I chose to use the border fabric on the back too. It's a Kaffe Fassett print called Paisley Jungle.

I asked Sue Burnett at Busy Bee Quilt Shop in Wellington to quilt this for me on her long arm machine. She did a fantastic job of stippling all around the felt, and the flowers and animals stands out even more now. I'm so pleased with what how Sue quilted it. She did a great job.

I chose a lighter blue Kaffe print for the binding, which you can just see in this photo.

I don't have a wall space large enough to hang this quilt, and I don't have little children to enjoy it right now, so it will be used with care, and maybe one day I'll have grandchildren who will enjoy it too. Until then I'll use it on our bed, and I'm sure I'll have sweet dreams under it.

This quilt was the third item on my Q2 Finish Along list.