Quilt Gallery

Please enjoy browsing through my gallery of personal and customer quilts!  Depending on what photo software your computer has to view pictures, you can click on these pictures to zoom in for detail.

Photo by Gregory Case Photography

I was chosen as the quilter by TQS (The Quilt Show) for this historic Rajah Quilt remake that made its debut in their booth during the 2015 International Quilt Show in Houston in October!
You can read more on my blog dated 11/23/15, but here's a few shots of the process:

A picture of the TQS booth at the fall 2015 International Quilt Market in Houston.  You can see this quilt at the center.  I couldn't be at the show or the taping in Denver prior to Houston Market.  Perhaps next time?!

This "Queen and Her Court" was made for our daughter and new son-in-law in 2011.

Our son-in-law wanted a Fleur-de-lis in the middle of the quilt so he got it!

The  picture gives a good close up of the Fleur-de-lis photographed in 'daylight mode'.

The scroll designs quilted are adapted from Karen McTavish's Custom Curves.

A small customer quilt, custom quilted in flowers.

The above and the next two pictures show custom quilting on a customer quilt that hung in the 2011 Denver Capitol Quilt Show.

The next three pictures are of a tablerunner and small wallhanging I pieced and quilted.  The wallhanging hung in the Firehouse Quilt Show in 2012.

The next four pictures are of a customer quilt I custom-quilted using ferns, cross-hatching, appliqué stitch, and a piano-key border.  These were taken with sunlight filtering in through a small window - a great way to emphasize quilting stitches.

The following 6 pictures are taken of a quilt currently hanging (Fall, 2012) at High Country Quilt Shop (HCQ) to advertise a class they are offering.  The 'pink' shots of the backing were included here to better show the quilting, which was largely poinsettias, curls, ivy, appliqué, stitch-in-the-ditch (SID) and meandering.

Okay, so all the previous quilts were relatively recent.  Let's go back a few years...

The next three are of a customer quilt.  She was giving the quilt away to her niece.  Inspired to quilt something a young person would enjoy on this Texas Star beauty, I quilted feathers and curls in the generous borders, and radiating suns in the corners and in each of the eight center blocks.

The next two pictures are of me and a quilt I made for my son and his wife in 2008 as a house-warming gift.  My daughter-in-law chose the pattern, and then she and I spent 3 hours selecting just the right fabrics...

After a few weeks I completed the quilt, and just before giving it to them, I revealed it at a local guild show-and-tell.  One of the officers of the state quilt council was in attendance, and highly recommended that I enter it into a local quilt show - the Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum's Quilts and Fine Wood-working Show.  I went back and forth about whether I should enter it.  After all, I make quilts to use and give as gifts, not for show.  But why not?

Entering it on the last day, I gave it the moniker, Grandmother's Trellised Garden and it garnered "Fist Place, Individual Primarily Pieced" - a cash award - and hung at the museum for about two months that fall.  The only problem was that my son and his wife couldn't snuggle underneath it for a while!

The shot below is of a local guild raffle quilt I was asked to quilt.

Below:  a customer quilt done up in feathers, my favorite custom style!

This shot is of a personal vintage quilt top I own that I quilted up in (what else?) feathers.  One of my favorite pastimes is antiquing, where I look for vintage quilt tops in great shape for a reasonable price so I can practice my traditional quilting.  In fact, the first two years I was in business I purchased many vintage tops off Ebay to quilt in the style of the period of the quilt top...a passion!

Not everyone wants custom quilting on a heavily appliquéd quilt, as the next two pictures demonstrate. This customer wanted a pantograph quilted over hers, which we thought came out very, very well.

The next picture shows some tight feather quilting in a small lap-sized quilt.

The following picture is of my #1 favorite personal quilt to snuggle underneath (my daughter's too!) because it is soft.  I paid $60 for this feedsack vintage top while antiquing.  I used muslin for the backing and cotton off-white thread.  It was quilted in edge-to-edge, sumptuous feathers, based on a technique by Suzanne R. Earley's Meandering Magic.

Below:  more feather mania!  This customer quilt was done entirely in feathers.  

Feathers twirl in the borders, and in each block I've quilted a feather wreath.

The next two pictures are of a quilt that a customer wanted something 'different' on.  She usually asks me to use pantograph designs, but let me use that 'artistic license' and go for it!  I love it when customers let me do that!

She ended up liking it so much she kept it, instead of her original intent of giving it away :-).  The technique used was taken from Sue Patten's Freehand Filler Patterns, which I use over and over in many applications.  Love it.

The following two pictures were taken of a customer quilt a few years ago that I custom quilted.  Intense quilting! 

The next two pictures are of a personal quilt I quilted up in 2007.  I was at Quilt-a-Fair in Longmont in 2006 and found a vintage 30's Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt top I couldn't pass up.  I loaded this hand-sewn gem up and quilted 1/4 inch continuous curves in all hexagons (yes, it took a while for that!) and a floral design in each of the pieced flowers.  

Notice the yellow border.  I wanted to use this quilt on my king-sized bed (actually, I use all of my quilts, vintage or not) so I ironed the edges of all the outside hexagons 1/4", and added four borders.  The quilt top ended up being wonky, so it was a trial to get the finished top to be square when loading it up.  But the finished result was worth it.  And yes, I do use it on occasion, and hang it in our home, as well, on a large wall just for large quilts like these.

The backing of the Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt:

A Hawaiian king-sized quilt I pieced and quilted in ferns.  It juried in the 2009 Quilts and Fine Wood-working Show, but did not earn an award and wasn't hung because there wasn't room in the show!

Below:  me in my home office!

The next four photos reveal the end result of using another feather technique on a customer's vintage quilt top.  She liked it so much she invited me to a special luncheon at her home with many of her friends in attendance to explain the longarm quilting process.  What an honor!

The next five shots are of a customer quilt that begged feathers; feather wreaths in the blocks, and undulating feathers in the border:

The corners of the quilt virtually exploded with feathers!

The floral blocks were appliqué-stitched and echoed.

The backing:

The next three are of a customer quilt I quilted November, 2012.  She had done some beautiful sashiko embroidery with white thread on black fabric in six blocks.  Using black thread, I appliqué stitched around each design to make it pop, meandered to the outside hand-stitched circle, and quilted rays outside each circle with Renae's Amazing Rays (www.renaequilts.com).  

  

Feathers were quilted in all other areas.  I must say, I've never used black, rust and green thread in a traditional application!  But what a stunning effect.  I thank my customers for trusting in my abilities when I don't think I have them :-) when all it takes is a bit of faith to step out of my comfort zone.

My first wholecloth!  I have over a dozen vintage linens that await quilting, and this one was the first!  It was given to my mother-in-law for Mother's Day.  I used Renae Haddadin's Amazing Rays once again, which I thought was a success on this quilt.  I used a water-soluble pen to transfer all markings.  The bad news was, after the quilting was completed, and when rinsing the markings I added Oxy to the water to 'kill two birds with one stone' to remove old stains.  I didn't know Oxy has a chemical that sets the blue marker pigment.  Horrors!  Lessons learned!!!!  My mother-in-law still loved it!

Okay, so whiteworking vintage linen #2 began with MUCH more knowledge than I had before the first one!  No Oxy combined with the rinse water!!!  This wholecloth went to my own mother for her Mother's Day gift.

I placed a doily in the center before quilting to hide a tiny repaired hole.  It worked swell!

A close-up of one of the butterflies in the corner.

The backing:

A customer dropped this quilt off and wanted a pantograph done over it.  I just didn't have the heart, because all I could see was big open white spaces filled with freehand feathers and curls, with each spiral being quilted in the same style.  She was thrilled to see it when she picked it up.