Mom & Dad's Native American inspired quilt - done!

Overall I'm really please with how this quilt turned out. It's always so neat to see how quilting transforms a quilt top into something even better. I wished I could have done the curved quilting in the lighter tan areas but I didn't have a ruler big enough to span that section and free-handing it was a mess. 

Did some swirls in the light brown section, didn't turn out too bad I think. My favorite parts are in the dark brown section which I can't photograph very well.

 Even the back looks pretty neat. So they have a reversible quilt if they ever feel like it. :)

Back

Quilt stats:
Size: Queen 86" x 93"
Fabric: Various from local quilt shops & online (Stonehenge, Batik, Michael Miller - Kokopelli)
Batting: Quilter's Dream Puff 
Thread: So Fine #50 in 403-Putty, 424-Chocolate & 425-Brown Sugar
Pattern: Made up by me from a needlepoint design my mom did

Deciding what to stitch

I have finished the quilt for my folks and am very pleased with how it turned out.
Before I share the finished 'masterpiece'. I wanted to chronicle how I came up with the final quilting design.

My idea

 I was really stumped on what to do for the center diamonds. So I went to the Machine Quilter's Resource forum and asked for design help. I got some really great feedback, especially from a really nice lady named Peggy. She provided the sketch below:

Peggy Holt's idea

I was blown away! Incredible. I loved her introduction of curves, it absolutely transformed the overall design.

So now my big dilemma was my ability to execute various elements. This is only the 3rd quilt I've ever quilted (on a long arm or otherwise).

In progress, stitchin in the ditch

I started out with all the stitching in the ditch and straight line quilting and then went through and did a meander around the kokopelli's. Annoyingly I found that I could stitch decently moving from left to right on the long arm but as soon as I tried to move from right to left the thread would start shredding.
Instead of investigating the issue I just plowed forward always making sure I was moving from left to right. Daisy will be getting a thorough spa cleaning before the next project is loaded and hopefully I can fix the problem of shredding thread.

Next post...the finished quilt (woot!).

Up next for finishing - Mom & Dad's quilt

I don't have a large enough space to lay out the quilt top in order to take a decent photo...but here it is ready for quilting.

So I'm hoping to start quilting this weekend and we'll see how long it takes for me to finish. :)

A Labor of Love

My folks just got a new fifth wheel and will be glamping it up this coming summer. I offered to make them a new quilt for their bed since they are not big fans of the bedcover that came with the unit. It's a win-win..they get a beautiful new quilt that is warm, snuggly & attractive and I get free advertising for my yet to be started quilting company. :)

Both my parents like native american designs and we considered many quilt patterns on-line and weren't quite finding anything that really seemed just right. My mom had this great needlepoint that she had done years ago hanging on her wall and I suggested using a portion of it as the inspiration for their new quilt. 

So at Christmas I took a picture of the portion I thought would work nicely: 

After studying the design I figured doing half-rectangle triangles would be the easiest method of duplicating the pattern. I used an Excel spreadsheet to help me define the pattern and fill in the colors my mom preferred, brown, taupe/beige, rust & a bit of blue. 

She didn't want solids so she chose some fabrics on-line that she liked and I used Adobe Photoshop Elements to fill in the design with the fabric patterns. 

We have some kokopelli's and petroglyphs and some great Stonehenge fabrics to use as mock solids and a beautiful blue batik to give it a pop of color. I think it's going to be awesome. 

Their first camping trip is the end of April beginning of May so my goal is to have it pieced & quilted by then.