Machine Quilting Adventure

The animal-themed crib quilt I started awhile ago for my niece's first baby is coming along well. Today I finished machine quilting all the solid-colored patches, and made good headway on the animal- and word-print ones as well. I had a lot of fun deciding on quilting motifs for each of the solid colors. Check these out:

Double hearts with a looping meander for the pale pink patches

Swirls for the orange patches...my favorite

Sunbursts for the yellow patches

Pea pods and snaky curves in the green patches

Waves for the blue patches

Stars with a large meander for the violet patches

I still have 3 rows of print patches to quilt, and then it's on to the binding. I can see the finish line from here!

Machine Quilting with Freezer Paper

I admit it...I have markaquiltaphobia. I don't like to make marks on a finished quilt top for machine quilting. I'm always worried I won't be able to get the marks out, or that I'll need to do a complete washing to get rid of them. I've tried marking lines with masking tape, sewing through vellum marked with quilting designs, anything to avoid marking on the quilt itself. But the method I like best involves quilting around freezer paper shapes. I got the Valentine table runner ready for this technique today.

First I pressed heart shapes and partial shapes cut from freezer paper to the pieced part of the runner:

Then I layered with backing and batting, and basted by pinning through each heart and partial heart shape:

All ready to quilt around the shapes! More soon.