Backyard Flower Patch

The pictures aren't fantastic due to the lighting but you can see the lovely colours of this large lap quilt that I made in 2025 for my workmate, Laura McVicar, on her 30th birthday.

The pattern is 'Morning Flower Patch' by Cheryl Brickey, from here book 'Just Two Charm Packs Quilts', and I used charm packs from my stash of 'Backyard' by Sarah Watts for Ruby Star Society.

I quilted it on my Bernina Q20 longarm with a free motion design based on a panto I had seen online (I don't have a panto device so had to free-hand it).

The quilt measures 54.5" x 67.5".

And Laura adores rabbits, so that was my cue to use this cute teal bunny rabbit print that I've had in my stash too.

So This Is Christmas

 Still catching up on 'old' projects - I finished this one during the New Year holidays at the start of 2023, using it as long arm practice on my 'Heidi' - a Bernina Q20 on a studio frame.

It was a good project to use, and show-case, the cute Christmas prints in a bundle of fat quarters that I had in my stash (purchased from Spotlight), supplemented by some other stash fabrics.

The quilting is a mix of free-motion and ruler work - I totally love being able to get a quilt finished so quickly on the longarm!

If finished at 42" x 52" (a twin quilt) and the pattern is from the book 'Simply Modern Christmas' by Cindy Lammon (published by Martingale), and is called 'Snowball Games'.

My intention was to gift it to Ronald McDonald House at Southland Hospital for them to perhaps use as a Christmas raffle prize, but I left it too late for 2023, so I got it to them in mid-2024 and it was used for a Christmas raffle at the Hideaway market day.

Beauty in the Unity

Another catch-up of a project from the past year or two that hadn't yet been shared...better late than never!

This quilt was a mystery QAL kit from Donna Ward at Donna's Quilt Studio (the store is now closed and Donna is focusing on longarm quilting), that I completed in 2022.

It had a good mix of different blocks eg flying geese, stars etc.

It is a large lap/small twin quilt that measures 57"square, and it made a good practice piece for learning to quilt with my Bernina Q20 longarm machine - I used both free-motion and ruler work.

I love the colour and boldness of Kaffe Fassett fabrics, but have not used them much - only on this little zip pouch - so chose this colourway for the project (Donna usually had three colour/fabric choices for customers to choose from when she offered a QAL).

Another chance to use some stash fabric for the backing - a batik that has been waiting for just the right project!

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!

Modern Plus

Have been updating my 'maker's journal' with craft projects and cross-referencing with photos and blog posts - and have found a few projects from the past year or two that haven't been shared, so will get them here on record...this one is from 2021!

It was a quiltalong project with Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs using patterns from her book, 'Modern Plus Sign Quilts'. I started it in 2018 and finally finished it in 2021.

I used solids or tone-on-tone prints from my stash, and practised a variety of free-motion quilting motifs or straight line designs to finish it all off.

It measures 63"x78".

The backing is from my stash too.