Rachael's French General Sampler Quilt

At the start of this year I had the privilege of quilting this 56"x78" twin bed sampler quilt for one of my most long-time friends, Rachael Chalmers (from Dunedin), who gave me free-range to do whatever I liked!

Although I've had my Bernina Q20 longarm since late 2022, I had only re-erected it a couple of months before Christmas (after having moved house in June), so have not completed a lot of projects on it yet.

With this quilt I was able to do a mixture of free-motion quilting and ruler-work, trying out different designs in the different blocks - gosh, I had so much fun!  The blocks are a mix of pieced and appliqued patterns, so it was fun coming up with quilting designs that would enhance those patterns.

Altogether it took about 12 hours of quilting time, and used x6 250m reels of thread (and x7 bobbins).

Squarosaurs quilt

This small twin bed quilt (or super large lap quilt) is a finish from the Easter holidays, and will be winging its way across the Tasman to become the new bed quilt in Brisbane for the son of one of my former pupils that I still keep in touch with!

His mum Leah requested something with animals or Pooh Bear, but nothing in my stash took my fancy (or I didn't have enough to make a twin quilt with it) - I found these cute dinosaurs at Spotlight and matched them up with some coordinating prints and solids.

The pattern is 'Scattered Squares' and is a free layer cake pattern on the Moda website, designed by Melanie from the A Bit of Scrap Stuff blog.

This version measures 47.5" x 56.5" - it was originally a bit too wide for my 5ft longarm frame, and I really wanted to quilt it on there, so I halved the blocks on each side and the ends and used a couple of those cut-offs for the backing.

I used ruler work to quilt straight line borders in the square-in-square blocks, and free motioned large stipple in the plain squares.

The binding is a sage green stripe.

We move house at the end of May and I am looking forward to having quite a few new quilt-photo locations in my backyard at the new house!

My Heidi

This is my first complete project to be quilted on my brand new Bernina Q20 longarm machine!

After much deliberation this year I bought myself a Bernina Q20 longarm machine and studio frame (with an extension ready for when I want to go big!) instead of taking a planned trip to Europe this year for my 50th birthday, which I had spent a few years saving up for. 

You can read about it's arrival here!

 I started with using the straight ruler to make the triangles in the white squares, and then used the curved ruler to create the loopy 'cross' inside the blue and purple plus blocks - being my first project with the Q20, it's all a bit wonky but I'm quite happy with how it improved as I went along!

I also decided to free-motion the side-to-side lines inside some of the triangles.

This photo shows up the quilting really well...I alternated the direction of the triangles on each row, so some are 'up' and some are 'down'.

The pattern for this lap quilt was based on a Quilty Love pattern 'Simple Plus quilt', and I made it a square quilt of 45"sq, which was just the right size to fit on the studio frame for my Q20.

The top was made with leftovers from this Irish Chain quilt, and from the leftover vintage cotton sheet that I had used for that project as well.

The backing is from stash fabric and leftovers.

As my Q20 is nicknamed Heidi, it also felt like the best name for this quilt, which I will be keeping for myself. And of course, a polka dot binding to set it all off.

Here are some shots from when I was doing the quilting:

It is so cool to have the quilt all stretched out, and the movement all takes place with the needle/machine, rather than wrestling the quilt through the space and trying to keep it flat and taut while sewing.

With the studio frame only being 5 feet wide, I can tell it won't be long until I am asking Jenny and Pauline to come back and add on the extension so I can do wider quilts!

Now, I must get away to the sewing room and whip up some more quilt tops so I can quilt them on Heidi! Our school summer holidays have just started, so that will give me tonnes of free time in my happy place...