What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Every year the Kentucky State Fair chooses to highlight a particular category of quilt. The style they choose is then its own category for the fair. In 2019 the category was two color quilts. There is something mesmerizing about many of these two color quilts. They are beautiful in their simplicity and intriguing in their complexity. Whatever they are, they are definitely a style worth trying sometime!

Two Color Quilts at the Fair

For those that attended the fair this year, you might recognize this one. Carol made this specifically to enter into the fair. The pattern is “Diamonds in ...

We love our longarm renters. They are so much fun and bring in some very pretty quilts for us to admire. We’ve seen everything from bargello to wholecloth, classic blocks to modern marvels. Some of my favorites are the creative applique quilts. Applique can literally be anything. There is very little that limits what you can add to a quilt by cutting it out and stitching it on a background fabric. Check out what some of our longarm machine renters have quilted with us.

Peggy’s Appliqued Baby Quilts

Obviously the quilt on the right is a jelly roll ...

Panels are a new quilter’s best friend. You can quickly and easily create something beautiful without much additional effort. They are also great to learn how to quilt on. Because they require so little effort and time to create a top, you don’t feel nervous about quilting it. If you mess it up, what did it cost you? You can always buy another panel and try again! Check out these quilts that some of our longarm quilting machine renters have quilted and you’ll see what I mean.

New Custom Quilter

Meet Lewe the Ewe from Suzybee. Anu ...

There are lots of different styles of T-shirt quilts and they are all the rage today. You can get a t-shirt at any event, sometimes included with the price of admission. Keeping all those shirts can really take a lot of room in your storage spaces and for what? You might never wear them again. The following quilts from our longarm machine renters are some great examples of ways to layout and quilt a t-shirt quilt.

With Sashing

This is Linda’s T-shirt quilt and she chose to use sashing. You can see that the shirts were definitely from a ...

There are many things that I feel make quilting one of the best hobbies to have. What we make is very useful. It can even save a life from hypothermia! Can a cross stitch do that? I don’t think so. There is room for all levels. A beginner can make a lot of mistakes and still pull together something beautiful they can be proud of. While an advanced quilter can take the time to make every seam and intersection perfect and create something truly impressive. It is also a craft that allows you to take scraps and perfect one ...

What I love about quilting is the sheer volume of potential patterns that can be used in a top. I have seen quilts made from photographs, from graphic artist’s designs, and from landscapes. If you can see it or even imagine it, you can create it in fabric. The longarm machine renters who come in to the shop often bring us imaginative and beautiful creations. Some are new patterns from up and coming quilting stars, while others are from patterns decades old recreated from pictures of quilts in museums. Regardless of where these patterns come from, the results are ...

Many of us have homes that are made of brick or stone. And when you talk about your house or the appearance of that house, we say, it is brick or stone. But it’s not just brick, is it? There is mortar that holds it all together. That mortar is important. You could sew the blocks right to each other, but sashing or lattices can really make a quilt pop. It can also help when your blocks are a little more unique and don’t match each other like they were supposed to. Either way, sashing with cornerstones is ...

There are a lot of really fun picture blocks out there. If you have a hobby or interest, it doesn’t matter how far out it is,  somewhere there is a quilt design that can reflect it. Many are paper pieced. This is when you add swaths of fabric right sides together under the paper pattern and stitch through the paper and fabric on a printed or drawn line. The fabric is cut to shape after it is sewn together when you trim the seam allowance before pressing it open and adding the next piece of fabric. It sounds complicated ...

We’ve all seen jelly roll quilts. The precut 2 ½” strips are super easy to use and come in so many great colors. A jelly roll race is always fun, but these longarm machine renters have brought us some quilts that are a little different. These ladies prove there can be more to stripes than just strips.

Carol Changes Her Stripes

This quilt from Carol is a perfect example. It is literally just stripes of fabric sewn together, but the artistry is the way they were cut and lined up. Obviously, Carol got her hands on a whole bunch ...

The process of quilting is to simply stitch together multiple layers of fabric. You can add batting in between, but you don’t have to. How you stitch these pieces together is a whole other question. There are many ways to quilt a quilt and infinite designs you can stitch. Besides hand quilting, tying, or using your domestic sit down machine with a walking foot, there are three different ways you can quilt with a long arm machine. In the quilts below, our longarm machine renters show off quilts they quilted with design boards, paper pantographs, or free motion quilting ...

Quilts are warm. We all know that. It is literally the whole point of a quilt. But quilts can be warm to look at as well. Some colors just give off a sense of heat and simply look warmer than others. These colors tend to be reds, golds, and browns though blues and greens can be added without losing the warm feeling. Check out the following quilts from our longarm machine renters and see if you agree with me.

The Warmth of Flannel Quilts

This is a quilt from Anna Maria. She made this for her son-in-law who begged to ...

One of the quilting world’s staple designs is the meander. Sometimes we don’t even think of the meander as a design. It is just a single line wiggling all over the quilt. The word meander actually comes from the name of a river in south western Turkey that has a lot of twists and turns. Now it just means to follow a winding course. However you define it, on a quilt it means a quilting texture that doesn’t add an additional design to the top. It is just nice and neutral. The following quilts are some of ...

Since Maxine Rosenthal published her One Block Wonder book, it has become a very popular quilt style. The technique takes a single fabric and creates hexagons that resemble a view through a kaleidoscope. The concept is quite simple, but the results look amazing and so complicated! Check out how our longarm machine renters were able to finish their quilts.

A Wine One Block Wonder

This is Amy and Linda (Linda is hiding behind her quilt). The quilt on the left is not a One Block Wonder. Because this was their first time quilting on the longarms, Amy brought some cute ...