Amish Pin Wheel

I have always been interested in the designs and colors of Amish quilts. A couple of years back I decided to adapt this style into a quilt that I was going to put together.

This particular quilt was featured on several catalog covers by “The American Quilters Society.” The first time it was on the cover of their 1988 Fall issue and then when they put together their Collection of Quilts 1860 – 1989, mine was also was one of the quilts that was placed on the front cover of that publication.

The colors were a combination of my own design and imagination. The blocks were pieced using the pinwheel pattern from 8 small triangles. The quilt was a standard bed size, machine pieced and hand quilted.

Although this photo was taken with a quilting hoop as a prop, I hand quilted this quilt in an old fashion quilt frame consisting of four boards, some clamps, and chairs.

Each triangle was quilted a quarter inch from the seam.

This quilt has a sweet little history. Not only did it make the cover of several publications, after about 5 years I received a letter from a lady who spent a night in a Bed and Breakfast in Vermont. She said she slept under this fabulous quilt, and she enjoyed the quilt so much, that she just had to write to me. When I sent the quilt to The American Quilter’s Society it was required to sew a sleeve on the back of the quilt with my name and address on. This was for photography and identification purposes. Apparently the sleeve was not removed by the buyer. What a thrill it was to know the location of my quilt, and also that it had a good home.

Applique Mixed Media Art Quilt

A couple of years ago I wanted to experiment with some fusible applique and Heat and Bond. It seemed like a great way to create something really new and interesting. I had purchased some roving wool, but had never worked with it before. It came in an assortment of six colors to a packet.

I used fabric from my stash that had quaint houses and flowers in the print. I fused a piece of Heat and Bond to the back of the fabric and started cutting out the cute little houses and buildings. I created a background out of landscaping fabrics and some really interesting tree fabric. The layout of the piece at this time of the project became a lot of hit and miss. I really did not have a clear idea as to how I wanted to project to look in the end, so I auditioned the fabrics in many different ways before they started to come together.

My husband is always interested in what I am doing. Here I am placing some of the flowers on to the background to create a layering effect.

When I originally started this project, I did not have any plans of sharing it with the quilting community. Unfortunately, I did not take a lot of photos during the creation process. I used the roving wool to create the sun and the sky. Once I had all my fabric arranged to create a scene of hills, a forest of trees, and my flower gardens and houses, I fused it all down to my background of muslin. I then covered the entire quilt with bridal tulle. I added batting to the back and pinned it in place.

My husband bought me a beautiful Juki sewing machine and a new table. I just love it. The machine is a real work horse with a good motor. It does a great job of free motion quilting. I took the pin basted quilt to the machine and added a lot of stitching throughout the sky and actually over the entire piece.

Once the machine thread painting was done I still needed to find a way to finish the piece. I used strips of black bias tape and gave it the appearance that you were looking out a window. I added a backing and binding and did a little more machine quilting. I wanted to have this as an actual piece of artwork, so I decided to put it into a solid black frame to keep with the window effect.

My daughter Barb really likes the color green, and since that is the primary color I used, I knew she would enjoy this project. She was really surprised when she opened her gift.

Here we are with the finished quilt. I called this art quilt, “The View Out My Window.”