I missed my little quilt club in March. They were working on applique and DSM quilting. They were doing machine applique, but I have wanted to try my hand at needle turned applique. I got the pattern to make the table runners the club made and tried to find some needle turned applique tutorials and you tube videos online. I found a couple and tried three or four different techniques. It was kind of hard to figure out how to do inside curves. I just winged it. I would really like to find someone to teach me how to do this. I don't usually like hand sewing, but found this relaxing. I surprised myself! I think they turned out pretty nice. I tried my hand at machine quilting with my DSM too. The blue one has stippling in the center around the applique and cross hatching on the borders. I did not enjoy doing that. The red ones have outlines and a little bit of twirls done with my DSM in the center. Then I loaded them on my frame and did large swirls on the borders. I enjoyed that process much better. One is for my mother for Mother's Day, one is for my daughter who is a wonderful mother. I will let her kids give it to her. The third one is for me!
Here is a quilt that I "designed" on EQ7 for a friend to give to her daughter as a wedding gift. I guess I designed it because I chose the blocks and border from the EQ7 library and put it together. Her daughter likes country colors and decorating. This took longer to make using EQ7 because the block sizes didn't work from EQ7. The seams didn't match up, so I had to make a bunch of mock blocks until I got the size right.
This is the first quilt that I pieced the back. I used all of the left over fabrics in the back. It made for an interesting back. I am looking forward to the bride's reaction when she gets the quilt. You never know how someone else is going to like something.
And here is another little finish. A friend had saved all the scarves from her dog, who had died. She now has new puppies and wanted some mats made for them out of the scarves. I tried to make them reversible and seasonal. They were very simple and more functional than anything else.
