Granddaughter Makes an Oriental Fans Quilt

When only 15, granddaughter Brittany spent the summer with me. While here, she learned to make this beautiful Oriental Fans quilt.





Coming to visit for the summer and to assist in our booth at the Anacortes Arts & Crafts summer street festival, she had never used a sewing machine before. For most of the summer, a corner of my quilting studio was transformed into her room. A natural talent, seeing that sewing machine in its desk every day must have drawn on her curiosity and artistic talents.


Providing just a little guidance and instruction to get her started, she quickly learned to use the sewing machine, selected her quilt pattern, colors and a lovely assortment of fabrics to use. She very carefully cut out all the pieces and organized them so that she could machine piece them.



It was fun and exciting to watch her progress as she turned the little pieces into blocks, arranged the blocks into strips and pieced the strips into a quilt top. Once the quilt top was sized to her liking, she layered it with the cotton batting and backing fabric. Quickly picking up the skill of freehand machine stipple quilting and learning to maintain control of the bulk of a huge sewing project, she added a beautiful freehand swirling machine stipple quilting. She selected beautiful, vintage silk thread from one of my special thread collections for the lettering on the special label she designed and made for her quilt using my machine's advanced letter embroidery function.



She worked diligently day after day and from start to finish, the entire project took her only a little more than two weeks. Watch her incredible progress in this video.




When she wasn't in the studio making her quilt, we were out sightseeing in our beautiful Pacific Northwest - covering most of the scenic, natural highlights from the Canadian border down to Whidbey Island, and many sights in between.







What a talented young ladyl! I am so proud of my granddaughter Brittany!

Stock

Blank note cards featuring professional photographs of some of the unique quilted items that I designed. Mounted on a high-quality card stock with matching envelops, these are truly some of my favorites. Designed around historical quilt patterns, many from the 1800s, then put to colorful combinations of modern, high quality cotton fabrics.I call this throw-sized quilt Geese-in Round. The center motif is the very traditional geese in flight pattern - only this time, flying in a circle - then framed with borders of vibrant prints and strips of traditional geese in flight. Truly a one-of-a kind!
My best seller at shows! Small medium and large, my line of Chinese coins handbags was designed around the traditional Chinese coins quit pattern, respresenting wealth and prosperity. Lined in pretty cotton prints with an inside pocket, the shoulder strap is made with a layer of cotton batting inside for extra strength and support. A complimentary button with loop closure is shown on this large shoulder bag.

A sample of my felted wool! Carefully hand knit by me from a very high quality, 100% merino wool and then felted by hand, hats, tote bags, purses and pouches, they are all very pretty. The tiny shoulder pouch shown in this picture was designed by me and is just big enough to hold a cell phone, drivers license, credit card and a few dollars in cash. What more does a girl need? Pretty and sweet, this pink shoulder pouch is embelished with a tiny rosebud and pretty bow, both also hand knit and hand felted by me to match the little pouch.

Always trying to do my part to keep stuff out of our landfills, here, I upcycled burlap bags. Getting them from local coffee roasters, the bags come full of green coffee beans and originate from all over the world. Their colors and textures are as exciting as they are unique - some a little on the "wild" side with a very international flair. I use them as fabric and turn them into something useful again. Our local newspaper even did an article featurng me designing and making these bags a few years ago. I layer them with quilt batting and line them with pretty cotton prints, turning them into messenger bags, tote bags, purses and throw rugs. Part of my "Green Coffee Bean" collection, here is a messenger bag featuring coffee beans for Fidalgo Bay Coffee.

Another upcycled green coffee bean bag, this one from Kenya and made ino a rug.

More.

Remaining Stock