Mary's Murmuration + Knockout Nene Quilts

Last night, I finished up quilting two gorgeous quilts for my client Mary.  😍. I keep pulling out my phone to look at and drool over the photos -- I am dying to share these quilts with you!  But it will take about a week for the big, brown UPS truck to get these quilts from my studio in North Carolina back to Mary in New Mexico, and then Mary will understandably want to bind both quilts and share them on her own blog, Quilting Is In My Blood, before I share the quilting photos here.    So you don't get to see those quilts today.

But then I realized that somehow I neglected to share two earlier projects that I quilted for Mary several months ago.  How did THAT happen?!  I know how it happened.  I loaded someone else's beautiful quilt on my frame and got totally engrossed and distracted!  

Without further ado...

Mary's Murmuration Quilt with Contour Cocoon E2E

Murmuration is an improvisation pieced quilt pattern from Bryan House Quilts, available for sale here.  The watery blues and greens of Mary's fabrics inspired the quilting design, Contour Cocoon by one of my favorite digital designers, Karlee Porter.

Mary's 62 x 72 Murmuration Quilt with Contour Cocoon E2E Quilting

In order to get that cascading waterfall effect with the quilting design, I loaded Murmuration sideways on my longarm frame -- like Landscape instead of Portrait mode, in photography terminology.  This is what Contour Cocoon looks like the way it's designed to stitch out:

Detail of Contour Cocoon E2E, Upright Orientation

Among quilters shopping for their first longarm quilting machines, a frequent discussion topic in social media forums is how big of a frame is needed.  Usually people think about this in terms of how many King size quilts they are likely to quilt for themselves, and how many King size quilts they think their potential customers might bring if they are wanting to start a business.  However, my 13' frame isn't only useful for King quilts.  

Happy First Day of Fall 2022! Nancy's Trail to Kansas Quilt + Elaine's Yellow Brick Road Quilt

 At exactly 9:03 PM EDT today, the Sun will traipse across the Celestial Equator.  Do you know what that means?  It means that today is the first day of FALL, despite temps still in the nineties and the threat of boob sweat stopping us Southerners from decking ourselves out in sweaters as we long to do.  We will rip out our impatiens and plant mums, and pile pumpkins, gourds, and random bales of hay on our suburban porches.  We may still be wearing sandals for a few months longer, but we will be choosing fall colors for our pedicures from here on out.  It's all about "mind over matter" as we celebrate the arrival of Fake Fall in the Carolinas.  

To help us all get in the mood for the new season, I've been holding back a couple of Fall client quilts to share with you today.  Grab your pumpkin spiced latte, your pumpkin muffins, slather on some pumpkin spice hand cream and if it STILL doesn't feel like it's fall, try lighting a pumpkin spice candle or two.  Here we go!

Nancy's Piecing the Trail to Kansas Quilt

There is a story behind this quilt, and another story behind THAT story...  When Nancy contacted me about this project, it had been languishing as a UFO (UnFinished Object) for quite some time.  The pattern is called Piecing the Trail to Kansas by Lynne Hagmeier of Kansas Troubles Quilters, and it comes with a historical fiction "journal" that has a chapter for each month about the joys and sorrows experienced by a family of pioneers on the wagon train to Kansas Territory in the 1850s.  The quilt block for each month related to what was happening in the book for that month's chapter.

Nancy tells me that she really got into the story about the pioneer experience and had enjoyed piecing the quilt top as a BOM (Block of the Month) program at a local quilt shop, but once the BOM program ended, her enthusiasm for finishing it petered out.

Nancy's 79 x 90 Trail to Kansas Quilt, Finished at Last with Primitive Fall E2E

I'm so glad she brought this to me because it's a gorgeous quilt that deserved to be finished!  There is also a story behind the Primitive Fall edge-to-edge quilting design we selected for this quilt, featuring pumpkins, moons, stars, birds (crows?), and botanicals.

Detail of Primitive Fall E2E on Nancy's Quilt

In the pattern cover photo below, you can see the additional appliqué elements that were supposed to be added to the background of this quilt.  Nancy had had enough of this project and just didn't feel motivated to do all of that appliqué work, even though the appliqué elements were symbolic representations of the storyline about the pioneer woman's family.