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Little Red Quilt House Your
source for quilting kits, services, and supplies |
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Quilts and Other Projects Just
Completed Like any quilter,
we get a great sense of satisfaction as we take each project off the machines
and get a comprehensive view of the finished results. With so much time spent
fretting over every stitch in close proximity to the process, it is easy to
become stressed over the impact on the outcome. But things generally turn out
just fine, and sometimes great! So with the permission of some of our most
recent clients, here’s a look at projects for which the last threads have
been snipped. Enjoy. Ms W, This is a
queen sized quilt using new batiks in blocks of random arrangements. To unify
the quilt, Ms W asked us to quilt a butterfly into each block and to use a
Sulky shiny Mylar metallic thread. Usually these threads are difficult to use
on a longarm quilting machine. But with our Statler
Stitcher system we have a variety of options to help us achieve the result Ms
W desired.
From the
pictures you can see the shiny metallic thread shows up nicely. To achieve
this look we used a gold colored rayon helper thread twisted with the
metallic to bear the tension created by the various longarm
machine mechanisms and the puller bar. This keeps the fragile metallic thread
from snapping. But this alone is not enough. We must still run the motif very
slowly. The Statler can be set to execute a pattern at a VERY slow and
constant speed allowing us to use even the fussiest and most fragile threads
in our quilts. Unfortunately,
these pictures don’t do the finished quilt justice, but the shiny golden
butterflies in random rotation all over this quilt made for a wonderful
finishing touch! This quilt also incorporates Matilda’s Own wool batting. Ms
W is giving this quilt as a gift to a friend in a cold climate and wants them
toasty warm when using it. As you can see from the pictures, Matilda’s gives
a nice troughing effect and helps to pronounce the
stitching. Mrs. F, This is a
wall hanging made for a retiring school principal. He served as the school principal from
1991-2004. There are 25 classrooms
with ap[proximately
510 students attending. This
“Signature Quilt” has 32 themed nine patch blocks representing fond memories
and activities, and thirty one signed snowball blocks by each of the 25
classes. The pattern is a simple
over/under tri-loop pattern we call LEAF03 that was quilted using A&E
Signature “Brights” 100% cotton variegated thread.
Mrs. S, We were
commissioned by Mrs. S to create a motif for a quilt top she made for a new
baby born to the daughter of Mrs. P her close friend. Mr. P died a few years ago and Mrs. S asked
if she could make a baby quilt from some of his clothing. One side, we called it the “hard side”, is
composed of denim and corduroy pant materials, along with silk neckties. The “soft side” is made from Armani silk
shirts, cotton boxer Bunny shorts and sear sucker materials. The binding was taken from one of Mrs. P’s
maternity dresses worn while expecting the new mom and later her brother! For
most quilters, this combination of materials would be a troublesome project. Maintaining straight pattern lines over
thick denim-corduroy seams, with transitions to thin neck tie silk, would
have been impossible with a typical hand guided machine. But with our computer guided system we were
able to let the computer execute the quilting process while we hand managed
the materials for the best possible result.
Although
there are a few small areas where the differences in materials caused some thread
tension issues, the over all project came out quite nicely. We custom
designed a layout in a Gee’s Bend style using Eggshell colored Robison-Anton
25 weight 100% cotton at six stitches per inch to give the quilt more of a
hand quilted look.
We echo
quilted around the pockets of the denim, and due to a very narrow cut to the
edge of the quilt ripped and then re-sewed the right pocket corner to overlap
the binding. The final effect looks quite nice and is an interesting
attribute of this quilt. The quilt was
finished off with a hand sewn binding. Also
incorporated into this quilt was the new Dream Angel batting from Quilters
Dream. This batting is made from flame
retardant fibers that form a protective shield against fire. We can’t think of a baby quilt that should
not be made from this product, and the price is minimal at $9.95 for a
pre-cut crib sized package. Mrs. S, This is a
commission quilt we accepted for Mrs. S as a Christmas gift. Unlike many
T-Shirt quilts, this project incorporates both a good number of sweat shirts
and images that are very large. The customer’s family is Irish and so an
Irish theme was desired. After examining the t-shirts we found that eight
patches were small and the rest large. So the patches were cut to form larger
blocks, reserving two central block areas into which we placed the eight
smaller patches. Following the Irish theme we bordered each patch with a
green print material and custom dyed a backing fabric in a pewter shade. The
quilt was finished off with a hand bound edge.
For the
quilting we chose a continuous over-under Shamrock motif using A&E
Signature cotton wrapped linen thread. The only concern we had while quilting
was the impact of a baseball shirt with a button down front. To secure the
shirt we sewed the flap closed and the quilting worked out fine. |
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