Hydrangea Quilt with Curling Amish Feather

a row of beautiful curling Amish feathers

What a beautiful custom longarm quilted quilt.   This customer loves tiny stippling (very small meandering) and asked if I would quilt this on this beautiful hydrangea quilt.  Well of course I would.  In fact that would look stunning if combined with outlining all the beautiful hydrangea flowers on this quilt.

shown laying sideways on a queen size bed

But this quilt also needed a “showboat”.  Something of a WOW effect that would be complimented by all that outlining and stippling.  So as you can see, a secondary design in this quilt is the long lines (flowing from left to right in the photo above).    And a Curling Amish Feather traveling the length of the quilt was the perfect solution.

Hydrangeas on dark background; stippling around blooms

The  outer 2 rows and the center row are mostly panel blocks that I quilted with the outlining and stippling.

For this I used a very fine 100wt thread, Kimono Silk by Superior Threads  This is a wonderful thread that all but disappears, leaving only a lovely texture.


 For the Curling Amish Feather I used Magnifico Thread by Superior Threads
  This is a beautiful 40 wt Trilobal Polyester thread with a beautiful sheen.  It lets my free motion quilting shine.  

Hydrangea block with hand guided custom quilting

For the bobbin thread I used the same as was in my needle.

The batting I used is Quilter's Dream 80/20 
The cotton in this batting gives lots of great stability for the dense quilting in this quilt.  And the poly portion of this batting gives this quilt just enough loft to make all those hydrangea blossoms puff up and have a bit of a 3-D effect.  I love this batting.  It drapes beautifully and gives the quilt a luxurious feel.

stippling around the blossoms and butterflies

These close-up pictures show why I love custom free motion quilting.  Hand guided quilting allows me to quilt around features in the fabric.  In this way my quilting compliments the fabric without overpowering it or covering it indiscriminately.

Even in the outside border I stippled around each of the white hydrangea blooms allowing them to pop up; almost burst out of this quilt.  A lovely effect.  

Outer border stippling around the blooms

 If you like this kind of custom free motion longarm quilting, be sure to subscribe to my blog.   And better yet, if you have a quilt top that's just screaming  . . .  "quilt me!"  I would be honored to quilt it for you.

There's lots more info about pricing and preparing your top for quilting on my website Quilts by Hannelore

And lastly, please, let me know what you think.  Leave a comment below.  Thank you, Hannelore

Something from Nothing; custom longarm quilting makes a difference

   

Custom longarm quilting makes all the difference

This was a fun quilt to make.  I love the difference between the “before” and “after”.

There’s no pattern. I had 3 extra blocks and bits of other fabrics left over after completing this year’s Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilt. And since I love to custom longarm quilt, I made sure there was lots of solid background fabric I could play on.

  I used my design wall and just played with it until I came up with something.  Unquilted it doesn't look like much.  But  I was looking forward to quilting all that white solid area.  I was hoping to make that shine.

Pieced top . . .  before quilting

Marking the solid white blocks and inner border

So the first thing  I did was find a stencil that would work well in that big open area.  And this cool feather border design was just the ticket.  Next . . .  grab the blue pounce pad and stencil and start pouncing.  A good trick to keep all that blue powder from falling off as soon as I pick up the quilt . . .  spray it with cheap hairspray.  Works like a charm.  Don't overspray and then wait a bit until the hairspray has dried before moving the fabric.  I did the same thing with the inner border.  I used a ribbon stencil here.  I could have totally free handed this, but this border is 4" wide, so having a guideline to keep things nice and even was helpful to me.

Adding markings for the outer borders

The only thing left was to mark the outer 2 borders.  On the blue border I decided to quilt continuous curves all around on both the solid blue portions as well as the blue and white pieced portions.  I used a piece of taylor's chalk to mark the 2" squares in the solid blue portion.

For the dark green outer border I thought I'd tie things together by quilting feathers to tie it together with the body of the quilt.  I only marked the spine for this, and later decided to only quilt feathers on the inside of the spine and fence rail straight lines on the outside.  Again tying the border together with the blocks and feathers in the body.

One of the pieced blocks

I quilted these pieced blocks after quilting the beautiful Amish feathers.  This helped me decide how to quilt them.

I like straight lines with curves and feathers, so I quilted the white areas on the outside of the star with the dot to dot lines.  Which I think added definition to the star.  On the 4 inside star pieces I put a simple swirl inside each white triangle.  And to finish it off, swirls around the border of each of these blocks.

So all in all this quilt is free motion quilted with:
- feathers
- swirls
- straight lines
- continuous curves

The back of this quilt.

I always like to look at the back of a quilt as well.  I love to see how the quilting presents itself on the back.  

To get the feathers to pouff I used a single layer of high loft poly batting

 What makes these feathers so defined is for one, the batting.  I used a single layer of Quilter's Dream Puff batting.  I am not a fan of poly batting, but this is awesome stuff.  Check it out Quilters Dream Puff Batting
And the other thing that makes these feathers stand out is all the tight density quilting around them.  In this case I echo quilted all around them.

Custom longarm quilting finished. Hanging on my longarm.

As for thread, I used Superior Threads "So Fine" thread on the back.  This is a 50 wt polyester thread.  And for the top, I used Superior Threads "Magnifico" thead on the top.  This is a very nice 40 wt polyester thread.

For a great place to purchase stencils, these are my goto places:  Quilting Creations  and Full Line Stencils
Full Line Sencils is also where I get my chalk powder and pounce pads.  Note that the white chalk powder is removed with heat, or light brushing with some scrap batting.  The blue chalk powder comes off with water.  You can spritz it with a water bottle or after the quilt is bound, wash it out in your washing machine.

And one last link to where I get the Clover Tailor's Chalk 
This is the yellow chalk I used on the outer 2 borders.  I love this chalk.  I have it in all the colors it comes in.  It just rubbs off when you're done with it.  

And one final look . . .

Thank you,  Hannelore
 Quilts by Hannelore

Why do I longarm quilt professionally?

So why longarm professionally?  Good question, right?  I think the biggest reason why I decided to longarm quilt professionally, or in other words, quilt quilts for other people, is because I love, love, love longarm quilting and really don't want to make that many tops, or for that matter make to own that many quilts.  Providing a custom longarm service for other people allows me to quilt such a variety of quilts.  You know when you go to a quilt show and look at all those spectacular quilts, that feeling you get . . .  well, that's what I feel when I look at a pieced top and wonder how I should quilt it.  And then when I see it coming together, that's an awesome feeling.  I love that.  

This quilt shown above is a perfect example.  When I first received it, I looked at it and thought . . .  "perfect candidate for an edge to edge design."  And it would have been, but . . . .   I got up my courage and tried something different.  Crossed my fingers and prayed that it would turn out beautifully.  And it did, well, at least I think it did.  That is such a sigh of relief when I unroll it from my longarm rollers and look at the whole top, and smile.  

So, if you're willing to allow me to custom longarm quilt a quilt for you, how about having it done for FREE.  Yes, FREE.  Refer another quilter to me.  If that quilter hires me to quilt for her/him, as a thank you for the referral, I will be happy to quilt a quilt of similar size for you for FREE.  For EVERY quilt I am hired to do, I am happy to quilt another for FREE as a thank you for the referral.

Thank you, Hannelore

Stitches of Kindness

Stitches of Kindness is a local organization here in the Traverse City, MI area.  It is such an awesome organization.  Many of you know it's founder, Lin Alessio.  She does an awesome job with this goup.  

Did you know that they just did their yearly dispursement of quilts to local organizations . . . hospice, EMS, North Flight, and more.  They donated about 150 quilts and blankets!!!!  Yes, that's NOT a typo . . .  about 150 quilts and blankets in 1 year!

I've custom longarm quilted a few quilts for them over the past few weeks (the one in the picture above is one of them) and plan on quilting many more.  I'm happy to do this at no charge to them.  If you're in a position to help, or would like to destash fabrics, battings, threads, patterns, etc.  they would be grateful.  Any and all donations, especially batting, would be awesome.  All donations are tax deductible.  Call the Grand Traverse County Senior Center Network at 231-922-4911 if interested in making a donation and/or joining Stitches of Kindness.

Thank you,   Hannelore

I quilted this on a domestic. Free motion quilted. One of many.

While I've been quilting on a longarm for only about a year now, I have been free motion quilting on a domestic for a number of years. 

This quilt is a Jinny Beyer design. I pieced this myself. Then quilted it. It's a queen size. 

Quilting on a domestic taught me much. Patience and control top the list.

I think the biggest difference between quilting on a domestic and quilting on a longarm, is that quilting on a longarm is much faster. I had no idea. For instance, this quilt took me a week to quilt on a domestic. But probably would have only taken about 8 to 10 hours to quilt on the longarm. 

 

It looks like a mess, but let's say it's an organized mess. It's really very do-able. I spray baste all the quilts I do/did on my domestic. And I quilt from the outside in. I know that's different than what other quilters say, but I think that if you're gonna stuff, wad, crumple that sandwich under the throat of your machine, it will do better if that part has already been quilted. I've done a couple dozen quilts like this, very successfully.

 

I did a lot of various feathers on this quilt. Mostly in the black fabric areas in and around the blocks. In the sashings and borders I ourlined the motifs in the border prints. These are all Jinny Beyer fabrics. I love her border prints. And because I think feathers and curves go great together with straight line work, I did some ruler work in one of the black borders. 

This was a fun quilt to make.

It is for sale. Check it our in my etsy shop.