More Vintage Pinwheels

Two months ago, I posted photos of my little challenge quilt called Lida Rose.  Dorry is the genius behind these challenges and this week I got to quilt hers.  She calls it Wedding China - she'll probably offer a full explanation of her title on her blog when she finishes it.

She has to decide if she wants a piping accent before the binding, and what color(s) to use.

Dorry took her vintage pinwheels apart the way I did, but it might be difficult to find them among her perfectly matched pinks.  I quilted this lower part with a large scale swirling feather motif, reflected and repeated in triangles -- as though this part were two large blocks cut in half diagonally.

One of the vintage blocks is shown in this next photo of the top row. (it's the pinwheel to the left). 

Dorry's beautiful stuffed applique work got a basket weave treatment.

 

We already have our next challenge to work on.  She hasn't let on how many vintage blocks will be in the June Bride series.  We had Bridal Shower  last summer, and this was Rehearsal Dinner.  I won't reveal the next one's theme until I have more to post about it, but suffice it to say, we haven't seen the actual Wedding Ceremony - and might there be room after that for a honeymoon theme?

The Greenest Quilt ever

This quilt is an international cooperation. It's a new quilt for Dorry's son Casey. Casey's aunt Kerry - Dorry's sister - made the top, choosing fabrics to remind Casey of his New Zealand heritage. New Zealand landscapes are known for their beautiful intense greens, and green is Casey's favorite color.


The photos were lit to show the quilting and so some of the non-green seems to be highlighted by the camera. Trust me, this quilt is Green Green Green!


We picked an all over New Zealand-based motif called Rotorua - the name evokes pleasant family memories. This close up shows the curls in the leaf shapes.


Kerry made the top, I quilted it and sent it to Dorry, who is putting the binding on. I hope Casey likes his Serene Green reminder of his other home, New Zealand.


I am not quilting for hire anymore, but Kerry thanked me for my labors on this quilt with a very special gift from New Zealand just for me! It came sealed up in plastic, but there was something about it that made Lu very interested.


and Lily likewise. The yarn contains Merino wool - something New Zealand is famous for - but also a good percentage of soft Possum fiber.



The postcard from Kerry in both photos shows the New Zealand possum. It's not related to our North American marsupial possum except by name, so this is a very special yarn in our hemisphere. Kerry sent me plenty enough to make a long sleeved sweater.

Dorry's Mystery Quilt

I quilted this Mystery Quilt for Dorry a couple of weeks ago - It arrived at her house today, so I can post photos.



Here's the concept of a mystery quilt: A leader instructs the participants to gather up a certain amount of fabrics using some formula - but without describing or showing them the design they are making. They only know approximately what size the finished quilt will be. The leader then doles out instructions and the quilters just have to start cutting and assembling fabric pieces with very little idea of how this is going to turn out. Dorry's came out very pretty!

Here's a closeup of the piecing and quilting - the stars have a sort of fish-hook based design. I was inspired by some Maori carving art Dorry shared with me.

Keeping that theme, I used a photo of a Maori tattooed arm for the border design.


Here's the back where the overall quilting scheme stands out.

Unique quilt gift

Dorry worked with some local friends and our International Round Robin cohort Rhonda to make this quilt as a gift. I brought it back when I returned from my trip to the Washington area earlier this month. The green and black blocks are called Courthouse Steps. The blocks are somewhat difficult to pick out because they are set on point in the quilt with their direction alternating -- and some are partial blocks. Dorry worked with quilt designer Ann Weber to come up with the setting of the stars and steps.

Kerry - Dorry's sister and also a Robin - had sent me the Maori quilting motif we used in the star centers. We saw this design earlier in the Round Robin quilt I assembled for Dorry: Robin Heather used it for an applique motif in two of the blocks that appear toward the left side of the quilt. (click on the image that appears at the link to see the photo large enough to appreciate Heather's versions.) The Maori Koru symbol appears in the green squares at the center of the Courthouse Steps blocks, and inspired the quilting for the border and background fills.


This magnified and lightened photo shows the border quilting -

We hope the recipient appreciates all our work.

Brown Eyes

Brown Eyes is what I call Dorry's latest quilt, made for a guild challenge. She was to create a quilt based on the song, "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue."

(be sure to click these photos to see details!)


Dorry had several requirements to meet for the challenge - mine was not to spoil the magical effect of her work. I don't know if the quilt was casting a spell, or if I was just in a better frame of mind to do this kind of thing than I ever have before. Perhaps it was looking at all the Zentangles, which I had been studying before I took the class a couple of weeks back, reported here.

Dorry's beautiful gardens have flowers and a bird house just like she has portrayed in her quilt. Her birdhouse has yet to attract a bluebird, but I gave her one for the quilted version, visible to the left of the coneflower.


I used more different quilting motifs for the background fill than I have ever done on one quilt before: feathers, leaves, swirls, wavy crosshatching, clamshells, fans, and shamrocks are the ones I can think of. The three diagonally oriented curved echoed lines in the center of this next photo are loosely based on a Zentangle design I had not previously attempted in pen and ink. The quilting in the light triangles is related to the echo and fill border I gave all the appliqued flowers.


The backing Dorry chose affords a different view of the quilting.



This last photo shows the extensive fill quilting I did on the shamrock border I posted here back in early April.


Dorry plans to add crystals to the quilt in honor of the song's recording artist. She has about a month to do that and get the quilt bound for the Quilter's Unlimited show where it will be hung with other quilts from the challenge.

first picture of quilting in progress

Dorry has given me her entry in a guild challenge to quilt. You'll learn a bit more about that when I get it quilted. She'll have been to New Zealand and back before I can post pictures, but I don't want anyone to think I'm not quilting! I just don't want to show very much until it's done and she's seen it.

But Dorry asked me to quilt the borders with something based on this motif, from an ad for a local pub




.... in three borders of her quilt. While the ad's shamrocks are pretty as colored silhouettes, they are too complicated for me to quilt, with too many of the stems and tendrils to really show up well as quilting motifs for all the trouble it would be. Her borders have flying geese inserts going around the quilt pointed clockwise, so I redrew the overlapping shamrocks to grow directionally, and last weekend I finished quilting the main design. Now I'll be spending quite a bit of time filling in around it but this is what it looked like yesterday before I started that process.

I didn't tell Dorry exactly what I was going to do done with her pieced triangles just under this border, so I've cropped that out of the photo.