Scroll down to see the quilts that I have made (that are still in my possession) since starting to quilt in the early 1990s. You can click on any photo to enlarge it for better viewing. Click on the name of any book mentioned to find out how to order the book for yourself.
"SUNSET ON THE CORAL SEA"
"SUNSET ON THE CORAL SEA"
My Original Design
77" x 96"
My original idea for this quilt was to make it in all blues, greens and teals. But when I went to the quilt shop and saw all the beautiful batik fabrics, I decided to use more colors. I asked the store clerk to cut 1/8 yard of every batik in the store! I brought them home, folded each piece into a small square and laid them out on the floor. Bill and I kept rearranging the squares until we were happy with the colors. I paper-pieced the blocks, and after I assembled them, I decided to add the piano keys border. I quilted it with an original design on my Gammill Classic long arm quilting machine, which I owned from 2001 to 2004. This quilt won second place in the 2003 Heritage Quilters Guild Bi-Annual Quilt Show in the "Large Quilts" class. It now has a place of honor on a prominent wall in my home, illuminated by art lighting.
I made this lap size quilt for my husband, Bill, to use as a "couch cuddly", and it is used all the time. The backing is a beige and green flower and leaf flannel. I got the pattern from Lynette Jensen's book At Home with Thimbleberries Quilts. I quilted it on my regular sewing machine, using a small crosshatch pattern. In the original pattern, all the blocks were made of the same fabrics, but I chose to use a lot of scraps that a friend had given me. She had decided to stop quilting. Imagine!
"FLORIDA"
64" x 79"
I saw a small wall hanging that used this block pattern and I rescaled it to make larger blocks and a larger quilt. I called it "Florida" because my husband and I went to visit my father in Florida and took my sewing machine and my whole fabric stash with us. When "the boys" went fishing, I pieced, choosing peach and green for the blocks and purple for the backgrounds. I backed the quilt in a beautiful purple flannel, so it makes a perfect "couch cuddly", and it is used all the time and is a favorite with family when they visit for the holidays. I used my Gammill Classic long arm to put a pantograph quilting design on the quilt, called Feather Meandering by Linda Taylor.
"CARAMEL STARS"
My Original Design
58" x 70"
I was shopping at Robert's Sewing Center and found a bundle of batiks that had one each of most of these colors, and they were folded up and bundled together in a star shape. The colors appealed to me and I knew that I would have to make some sort of star block. I designed this quilt to accommodate the fabric and then added a little bit more for the borders. The backing is regular cotton, not a flannel this time, and it makes this "couch cuddly" a little bit lighter, for when it is only a little bit cold in the house. I quilted it on my Gammill Classic long arm quilting machine and used a quilting pattern that looks like realistic leaves.
"ANNELISE"
My Original Design
39" x 47"
After taking a break from quilting for a few years, this quilt for my first grandchild was my reentry into the quilting world. I used a "Charm" pack from Moda called Giggles that was made up of 40 different baby flannels, each one pre-cut to a 5" square. I no longer owned my Gammill, so I took it to my friend, Nancy Mancke, who has her own Gammill and quilts professionally, as I used to. She did a very cute little bubble pattern from border to border, and a heart pattern for the borders. The backing and even the binding are flannel, and it is a very soft, warm quilt for a little girl. Annelise received this for Christmas when she was almost two years old. It lives at my house, and she uses it all the time when she comes to visit.
"FLORIDA STAR"
19" x 43"
I made this table runner a few years ago and taught it as a class at Top Shelf Quilts. I got the pattern for the block out of Carol Doak's book 50 Fabulous Paper-Pieced Stars and designed a table runner around them. Each block in this book is named after a state in the USA, and this one is named for Florida. I love paper piecing, because you can do incredibly complicated looking blocks just as easily as more simple patterns, with the same degree of ease, and paper piecing is definitely easy! My friend, Cherie Stapleton, let me use her Gammill to do the quilting. Thanks, Cherie! I used a pantograph of meandering feathers.
"WILL"
My Original Design
42" x 60"
I made this quilt for my second grandchild. I was going to make it similar to his sister's quilt, but I found a Moda "Layer Cake", called Summer's End. It was a collection of 40 different 10" squares. I decided that Will would not like to have a quilt that looked too "baby-ish" when he got a little older, so I made it a little bit bigger than Annelise's and with the more mature fabrics. I used a "no waste" method for making the Flying Geese blocks, and it was very easy and enjoyable. I used a nice dark flannel for the backing and quilted it at my friend Cherie's house, using Linda Taylor's Feather Meandering pantograph quilting pattern. Will's 3rd birthday is in July, but I could not wait to give it to him, so he got it four months early.
"LITTLE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD"
My Original Design
22" x 22"
These three small wall hangings (or table toppers) were designed and made for a class I was teaching in my home. The pattern uses a fusible grid - you cut out the small squares, lay them out in your desired design on the grid, and then press them to secure. Then you just sew all the horizontal seams and then the vertical seams, sewing on the printed line of the grid. Add borders, quilt and bind and you can make this small project in a few hours, start to finish.
"ARIA"
36" x 42"
This wall hanging size quilt was taken from Valori Wells' book Radiant New York Beauties. It is paper pieced and I drew the pattern myself, free-hand, as part of a lesson in the book on doing just that. It was a very challenging quilt! I used my Gammill Classic long arm quilting machine to quilt it with a pattern of swirls, stars and even a smiling Man in the Moon! Click on the detail to the right and see if you can spot him.
"DOLL QUILT"
16" x 20"
I saw a full size quilt at a quilt show that was made with a "Magic Triangle" ruler. I bought the ruler and tried out the technique with some scraps and finished it off as a doll quilt for my granddaughter. It is quilted "in the ditch", which means it is only quilted in the seams between the different fabrics. I still want to make a full size quilt using this technique. Maybe teach a class on it... Is anyone interested? It would make a great first quilt or baby quilt.
"PRAYER"
My Original Design
74" x 93"
This is the first full size quilt that I made, and I used the computer program Electric Quilt 2.0 to help design it. I used a paper pieced block from Carol Doak's book Easy Machine Paper Piecing and I used the color selection techniques I learned in Jinny Beyer's book Color Confidence for Quilters. The top for this quilt was started in 1997, put aside for a while, and then finished in 1999. It was put aside again until 2001, when I purchased my Gammill long arm quilting machine. It was one of the first quilts I quilted on my new machine, and I used Linda Taylor's Feather Meandering pantograph quilting pattern. I used a verigated red, white and blue thread on the top and bottom. I called it Prayer because I pictured it as God in the upper left, shining His light into the darkness, where it is reflected in the believer in the lower right hand corner.
"WATER RAINBOW"
100" x 100"
The photo above was taken outdoors on a camera that used film, and at the moment I shot it, the wind blew. You can see how it looks crooked in the bottom left corner. I made this quilt in 2002, using a pattern I found in Laurie J. Shifrin's book Batik Beauties. The quilt in the book was called Native Rainbow and used earth tones. It was a small wall hanging, so I had to do all the math to enlarge the pattern to a queen size quilt, and it wasn't easy! I decided on this colorway instead and renamed the quilt. I custom quilted it on my Gammill Classic long arm quilting machine according to the design in the book, and added crosshatching to the border. I have used this quilt on my bed since the day it was finished, and it has been in the sunlight for ten years now. The photo on the left was taken when I first started using it on my bed. Sadly, it has faded quite a bit since then and the colors are not as brilliant as they are in this photo, although it is still striking, even if it now looks like it was made with "pastel" batiks!
"SUMMER AT GRANDMA'S"
47" x 47"
I got the pattern for this wall hanging from Bethany S. Reynolds' book Stack-n-Whackier Quilts. I used a special ruler and a method of stacking fabric together to cut six blades of the exact same pattern. I quilted it on my Gammill Classic long arm quilting machine, using the pantograph pattern Chantilly Lace. For the fan blades, I stitched in the ditch. I named this quilt for the memories I have of spending summer days at my Grandma Skvorc's, a small farm that had every kind of vegetable, fruit and berry you can think of.
MY GAMMILL CLASSIC LONG ARM QUILTING MACHINE
I came across this photo of my machine that I owned from 2001 to 2004. It was kept in a bedroom and took up the whole room, with only enough room to walk around one end of it. I sure do miss that machine! I hope to be able to afford to get another one some day, but the next one will have a Statler Stitcher, which is a computer program that runs the machine automatically after you program in the pattern you want to sew.
"GARDEN TWIST"
51" x 62"
This is the first quilt I ever made! I don't remember the exact date, but it was in the early 1990s. After I bought all the tools I needed to make the quilt, my sister Diane said, "When you get tired of doing this, can I buy all your stuff for half price?" Little did she know! This quilt was taken from Sharon Evans Yenter's book In the Beginning. It actually used templates for cutting out the pieces, which is kind of silly, now that I know how easy and efficient it is to use modern rotary cutting techniques. I also did not know you were supposed to use cotton quilt fabric, and I just picked out fabric that looked good, and some of it was Waverly drapery fabric, which is pretty thick. Especially since I had never heard of machine quilting and I planned to quilt by hand. Which I did, and started out with pretty big stitches. As I got better at it, my stitches became more even and smaller. By the time I reached the outside edge, I was getting 12 stitches to the inch and it was looking pretty good. Click on the photo to the left and you can see how pretty my hand stitches were. By the way, I did hand quilt one other quilt (that I gave away as a gift to my dad), but it's been machine quilting ever since and I've never looked back!
77" x 96"
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| (click to enlarge) |
"WILDFLOWERS"
57" x 68"
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| (click to enlarge) |
I made this lap size quilt for my husband, Bill, to use as a "couch cuddly", and it is used all the time. The backing is a beige and green flower and leaf flannel. I got the pattern from Lynette Jensen's book At Home with Thimbleberries Quilts. I quilted it on my regular sewing machine, using a small crosshatch pattern. In the original pattern, all the blocks were made of the same fabrics, but I chose to use a lot of scraps that a friend had given me. She had decided to stop quilting. Imagine!
"FLORIDA"
64" x 79"
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| (click to enlarge) |
"CARAMEL STARS"
My Original Design
58" x 70"
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| (click to enlarge) |
"ANNELISE"
My Original Design
39" x 47"
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| (click to enlarge) |
"FLORIDA STAR"
19" x 43"
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| (click to enlarge) |
"WILL"
My Original Design
42" x 60"
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| (click to enlarge) |
"LITTLE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD"
My Original Design
22" x 22"
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| (click to enlarge) |
"ARIA"
36" x 42"
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| (click to enlarge) |
This wall hanging size quilt was taken from Valori Wells' book Radiant New York Beauties. It is paper pieced and I drew the pattern myself, free-hand, as part of a lesson in the book on doing just that. It was a very challenging quilt! I used my Gammill Classic long arm quilting machine to quilt it with a pattern of swirls, stars and even a smiling Man in the Moon! Click on the detail to the right and see if you can spot him.
"DOLL QUILT"
16" x 20"
 |
| (click to enlarge) |
I saw a full size quilt at a quilt show that was made with a "Magic Triangle" ruler. I bought the ruler and tried out the technique with some scraps and finished it off as a doll quilt for my granddaughter. It is quilted "in the ditch", which means it is only quilted in the seams between the different fabrics. I still want to make a full size quilt using this technique. Maybe teach a class on it... Is anyone interested? It would make a great first quilt or baby quilt.
"PRAYER"
My Original Design
74" x 93"
 |
| (click to enlarge) |
"WATER RAINBOW"
100" x 100"
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| (click to enlarge) |
"SUMMER AT GRANDMA'S"
47" x 47"
 |
| (click to enlarge) |
I got the pattern for this wall hanging from Bethany S. Reynolds' book Stack-n-Whackier Quilts. I used a special ruler and a method of stacking fabric together to cut six blades of the exact same pattern. I quilted it on my Gammill Classic long arm quilting machine, using the pantograph pattern Chantilly Lace. For the fan blades, I stitched in the ditch. I named this quilt for the memories I have of spending summer days at my Grandma Skvorc's, a small farm that had every kind of vegetable, fruit and berry you can think of.
MY GAMMILL CLASSIC LONG ARM QUILTING MACHINE
I came across this photo of my machine that I owned from 2001 to 2004. It was kept in a bedroom and took up the whole room, with only enough room to walk around one end of it. I sure do miss that machine! I hope to be able to afford to get another one some day, but the next one will have a Statler Stitcher, which is a computer program that runs the machine automatically after you program in the pattern you want to sew.
"GARDEN TWIST"
51" x 62"
 |
| (click to enlarge) |
