Thursday, May 28, 2015

Finished Beach Quilt

The beach quilt (pattern by McKenna Ryan) is finished and ready to go to my friend. After sewing the blocks together there was one more appliqué scene to add to the corner and then the quilting began.

It was a pretty easy quilt to machine quilt, I had a chance to use that little echo attachment on my machine walking foot. I have had my machine for years and I don't think I have ever used it but it worked great.

Once I had the first waving line of quilting across the background I set the little echo arm to 1 1/2 inches and did all the lines, I did the second line 1/8 inch away from all the first waving lines I quilted.

The blocks were quilted pretty simply with waves, clouds, and rings echoing in the water.

 

Happy Stitching All,

Cheri

 

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Beach Quilt

I have a friend who asked me to make a beach quilt for her. She was stationed in Washington state when her husband was in the Navy and McKenna Ryan's quilt "From the Coast With Love" was a perfect pattern.

I just finished assembling the blocks for this quilt this morning. If you have not ever made a McKenna Ryan quilt, the first part is all tracing, cutting, layering, and fusing the appliqué pieces onto the block. All of the fabrics are batiks, so there are lots of oportunities to find just the right shading and shadowing for each piece. I follow the pictures on the patterns quite closely as I am not that artistically minded. The raw edges of the appliqués will be stitched down when the assembled blocks are quilted.

A lot of these blocks remind me of the Texas coast where we like to vacation and spent last winter.

Many laughing seagulls in these blocks.

But this quilt is definitely from the Pacific coast with it's sea otters,

seals,

and heavily forested islands.

The next part will be sewing the blocks together and a few more appliqués in the borders. It is a rainy cool day here in Nebraska, a good day for sewing and dreaming of the beach.

Happy Stitching,

Cheri