Chunky Race Quilt Top

I have been wanting to practice some quilting motifs lately. So when I saw Jasmine's Chunk Race Quilts I knew they would be perfect for that. I wanted to make my quilts a little bigger than hers so I followed her directions using graph paper to see how many bricks I would need.  It took a couple tries to get it the right size, but mine finish at 49 x 59.5

My first one is this green and orange one. It was more of a trial run to see if my graph paper layout was correct.  It turned out okay, but I was having trouble remembering how to do the jelly roll race quilt.  But once I got this one done and my memory came back to me, I made a second one to do it right.

This one turned out great!  It uses 49 bricks with the last 3 being added to the top of the quilt for an odd number of rows.  There is no way to get 17 rows using the jelly roll race method.  The sewing of the top takes no time at all, it's the laying out of the bricks on the design wall that takes so much effort.  I made a chart and updated the method so I won't have to layout on the design wall.  I haven't had time to test my method yet, but when I do I'll let you know if it worked.  And I will share it with you.  I'm swamped with 3 custom quilts right now, but as soon as I'm done I plan to get back to working on this project.

Quilting and Quilt Finished

This is a queen sized hand sewn customer quilt that I was asked to quilt and bind.  It was not in great condition.  It had holes and more fullness than I have ever seen or had to work with. I told her puckers would be unavoidable and they were.

Here are some before shots. I think there were worse spots than these just didn't get them in the photos.

And here are the after shots.  I quilted it in a smaller than normal meander hoping to hold down the extra fabric.  I was also hoping to be able to close up the holes with the meandering.  I think it worked pretty well.

My customer told me that someone had already told her "no" to quilting this for her.  I knew that she wanted it quilted and not being a quilter herself, didn't really understand how bad this top was. Thankfully she doesn't want to use this quilt on a bed or anything.  From a distance I think it looks nice. And I think she will be happy.  

What do you do with tops that are not sewn together well? Have you ever told your customer no?

What I'm Working On and November Stash Report

I received this quilt top from a friend of mine.  It's quite old and she wanted it quilted.  It's a hand pieced queen size quilt that is not in great condition.  Normally I would have said no to this request, because it's going to be impossible to quilt this without puckers.  It's that bad.  But she doesn't mind the puckers, she just wants it done.

November Stash Report
Joann's has a big sale for Black Friday and I couldn't resist getting a little fabric. So that means I brought more in this month than I used.  See that's just the reason for keeping track. I probably would have purchase way more if I wasn't counting!

Nov in: 31
Nov out: 34.5

YTD in: 473.75
YTD out: 566
YTD change: 92.25

Boundless Beauty

 68 x 68

This is Myra's new pattern! I made a lap size using a black blender for my background. This pattern is written so you can strip piece to make the sewing faster or you can piece it traditionally if you want more control over where the colors are placed. Either way you go, it's a great pattern.  You can find it here.

It is quilted with an meander in a black thread.  I spent some extra time piecing the strip for the back because I had some leftover pieces. I had to do some seam ripping and resewing to get the black zig zag where I wanted it.  But it was nice to use up the pieces instead of putting them in my scrap bin.

Linking with Finished or Not Friday and Crazy Mom Quilts

Purple Diamonds

 50 x 60

These are some of my favorite colors! I used the same fabrics from my Falling Stars quilt except I changed the background color to Navy.  It's actually called Kona Cotton Nightfall. The squares were cut 6" sewn into half square triangles and trimmed to 5.5"

I wanted to quilt something different on the prints and the navy, but I wasn't sure how to get around the quilt on my longarm. So I asked some people on facebook for some suggestions. Going with some of their suggestions, I quilted e's and l's in medium blue thread on the prints and 2 straight lines in navy on the navy. I wanted to quilt more straight lines on the navy, but it didn't make sense time wise and it looked good without it.

I added a wide strip to the back as always because I never seem to have enough backing fabric. But you know I like to do that anyway. A pop of color on the back helps make the quilt special.

Linking with Needle and Thread Thursday, Finished or Not Friday, and Crazy Mom Quilts.