Inspired by Anka’s Treasures

This was going to be a runner for the buffet and the pattern was inspiration from a book  by Heather Mulder Peterson called Favorite Quilts from Anka’s Treasures.  The name of the pattern was Candy Apple Blossoms and she had appliquéd some flowers in the white section, but I am thinking I will leave it and quilt some feathers in there instead.There are several patterns in this book inspiring me right now, but I picked this one and spent yesterday working on it while it was hailing and raining out.  It didn’t look quite right as a runner, but moving blocks around led me to this design which fits nicely on my little table.  Now it is ready for quilting…deciding what to quilt takes me longer than the quilting so it might be a while, but hopefully it will be done for the holidays!

Well, since I started this post last week I have gotten some of the quilting done on this piece, but got stuck on how to quilt the colored logs and the border.  I am thinking of either quilting in the ditch or cross hatching for the logs and I have a curlicue design in mind for the border.  Hopefully this will soon be bound in black and done in time to grace my table for displaying some Christmas baking!

The rainy weather has had me on quite a roll of finishing up old projects and I am loving that it is also giving me more practice on my quilting.  I finished up this piece that I started a few years ago intending to make a round pillow, but it changed into a table topper.  I finished the embroidery and quilted it and I really like how it all turned out.  It is reminding me that even though the weather is wintery Spring will be back before we know it.

I also pulled out this  table topper that I bought as a kit at the Quilt Market in Des Moines last October.  I had so much fun quilting it with wintery designs that I made up as I went I played with threads too.  I made a chain of mittens and quilted earmuffs on the snowmen  I still have to tack that binding down, but that should be finished in an evening of hand sewing.  I prefer to use double thick fabric cut on the bias if possible for binding and sew it on at 3/8” then I fold it over and hand sew it on to the back of the quilt.  This is the method that has worked out the best for me.  I cut my bindings at 2-1/4” wide.  (I am posting this here as a reminder to myself).  I have 3 little quilts sitting right now waiting for me to hand stitch the bindings down and it feels so good to have gotten this far with them all.  I am very glad that I have learned to free motion quilt because it is helping me to finish all the projects that I started a few years ago and now I can look for new projects to start!

Looking forward to new beginnings!

Ferne